IL6 and allergic asthma: Indeed, growing up on a farm provides protection against allergic asthma [8], while healthy young persons raised in a city, without daily exposure to pets for the first 15 years of life, respond to a psychosocial stressor with exaggerated increases in numbers of circulating peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and increases in circulating concentrations of interleukin 6 (IL-6), a proinflammatory cytokine, relative to those who were raised on farms in close proximity to farm animals [9].