Exposure to ‘good’ bacteria may cut asthma risk in infants

The finding is part of a larger research project for the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study, which began in 2007 by recruiting 4,000 pregnant women across Canada. Findings revealed that the majority of infants in the study showed lower levels of the four specific gut bacteria researchers were looking for at the three-month-mark-increasing their asthma risk.

More research is also needed to better understand the normal process by which bacteria occupy the gut, and where these bacteria come from – for instance, whether they are passed from mother to child, or come from the food people eat, Bailey said.

But Finlay hopes his research will eventually help identify at-risk kids or lead to treatments for preventing asthma.

For the study now published in Science Translational Medicine, the team looked at 319 of those children, 22 of whom were judged to be at high risk of developing asthma based on allergies and wheezing.

But a “vision for the future would be to prevent this disease.”Asthma has been on the rise in recent decades, and is estimated to affect 300 million people worldwide and almost 10 percent of USA children. However, he added that while the study throws up a few significant facts, still there’s a lot of information to be gathered about the four bacteria.

“This study, I think, maybe starts to emphasize that we need to revisit our relationship with bacteria”, said co-author Stuart Turvey, a doctor at the British Columbia Children’s Hospital, who cautioned against seeking the answer in store-bought products.

Asthma specialist Dr. Mark Greenwald, who is not one of the authors of the study, agrees that there does appear to be a critical developmental window of three months.

It’s still not known how these bacteria get into the gut, Franco said.

They studied the children’s fecal samples when they were three months old using a special genetic technique. And previous studies have shown that babies treated with antibiotics before their first birthday are more likely to be diagnosed later with asthma. Similarly, breast milk may contain favorable microbes that an infant misses when fed formula.

Finlay said the researchers “were all blow away by how early in life” the difference occurred. The animals went on to develop inflamed lungs indicative of asthma.

“We’re starting to discover this massive universe of bacteria”, said Turvey.

A United Kingdom study indicates that Caesarean babies have a 20 times higher risk of suffering from asthma. So, it won’t be a big surprise if stronger immunity offered by “good bacteria” in the gut can reduce the risk of a child developing asthma.

The researchers also tested the effects of seeding the guts of germ-free mice with the stool samples they’d taken from the asthma-prone 3-month-olds. “Five years is a short time in asthma history”, Reibman says; she wants to know what will happen as the children mature. The theory is that gut flora gained during the first 100 days of life help shape a baby’s developing immune system, Finlay said, which in turn influences whether they will develop conditions like asthma.