“Five years is a short time in asthma history”. However, this was only the case for three-month-olds so the effect, if it exists, is likely to be time-limited. F stands for Faecalibacterium, L stands for Lachnospira, V for Veillonellaand, and R for Rothia.
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“There’s more and more evidence that modern illnesses derive from this loss of microbes – especially early in life”, said Martin Blaser, a microbiologist at the NYU Langone Medical Center. Similarly, breast milk may contain favorable microbes that an infant misses when fed formula.
Where did the story come from?
“This discovery gives us new potential ways to prevent this disease that is life-threatening for many children”, study co-author Dr. Stuart Turvey, pediatric immunologist at British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, said in a statement.
The new report was published September 30 online in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The story was not widely covered in the media. With these results, that may begin to change.
What kind of research was this?
In the study, the researchers have assessed the stool of 319 Canadian infants. Now, though, scientists have pinned down four types of bacteria whose presence definitively prevents asthma-a chronic lung disease that would seem to have no business communicating with your nether regions. Preliminary tests have already shown promise in mice.
What did the research involve?
By bacterial therapy, scientists refer to procedures that focus on modifying bacteria populations in people’s gut in order to fit their needs and bring them health benefits. Most doctors suspect it’s because we’re overusing antibiotics, throwing it at any bacterial problem that comes up and making our environments unhealthily clean. “We know there’s communication between the gut and different sites”, he says, whether it’s skin, eyes, or lungs. Restoring the missing bugs markedly reduced airway inflammation in the mice’s offspring, they reported. But it also suggests that providing this group with the unique mixture of four bacteria-a combination not found in current commercial probiotics-could prevent the onset of asthma. Eight of the 22 high-risk children have been diagnosed with asthma.
Importantly, the researchers only found differences between the groups’ stool samples when the children were three months old. Finlay and his colleagues bred mice with low levels of FLVR and then treated them with probiotic-like supplements of the bacteria and the animals were protected from asthma. Turvey is coauthor of a new study that suggests not having enough of certain “good” intestinal germs early in life may increase babies’ risk of developing asthma.
“The babies who did not develop these symptoms invariably had high levels of the four microbes in their 3-month stool samples”, the researchers said.
“What data’s really starting to show these days is that the immune system gets itself set up in the gut and influences how it works everywhere else in the body”. It is thought to be caused by a compromised immune system. However, the study has limitations. “At three months, these babies are not even getting started in the world yet”, Finlay observed.
Finlay cautions that much more research is needed before conclusions can be drawn about the microbiome’s precise role in asthma. There may be other factors that are important but have not been considered in this study. They are among trillions of bugs that make up the human “microbiome” and are critical for keeping us healthy.
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Humans are covered entirely with bacteria.
