Gut Bacteria Could be the Key to Preventing Asthma

Children gain protection against asthma if exposed to four types of gut bacteria by the age of three months, as their immune system is being established, a team of B.C. researchers has discovered.

Newborn mice given the four bacteria developed less severe asthma, according to the research, but Turvey emphasized more research must be done before that could be done with humans. Further down the line, Turvey says, scientists could even use FLVR to come up with a preventative treatment for asthma. The animals went on to develop inflamed lungs indicative of asthma. 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. We share our bodies with trillions of microbes that play key roles in keeping us healthy — and different combinations of bacteria in the gut are thought to shape the immune system in ways that can affect the risk of a variety of diseases.

Infants who lack certain types of gut bacteria in the first few months of life may be at increased risk for asthma when they’re older, a new study from Canada suggests. To do that, the scientists gave them an allergy test and checked to see if the kids were wheezing.

It’s not clear exactly where the bacteria found in babies intestines comes from, but the study should encourage parents to loosen up a bit when it comes to letting children explore their environments, Turvey said.

Michael Bailey, of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, who was not involved in the study, said that the new finding “supports the idea that the normal development of gut microbes is really important for overall health”. “Then we started to dig down to the really fine level and that’s when we found these four”.

“Confirmation and extension of these findings should allow us to develop better approaches to prevention, including restoration of microbiota”, they wrote.

“This is an exciting article”, says Joan Reibman, an asthma researcher at New York University.

The study included 319 children aged three years and less. The CHILD Study has recruiting centres at BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, Women & Children’s Health Research Institute in Edmonton, the University of Manitoba, and SickKids in Toronto with its national coordinating centre headquartered at McMaster University in Hamilton. The so-called hygiene hypothesis proposes that changes in our lifestyle over time – to a more “hygienic” way of living – have resulted in decreased exposure to microbes that are important for our immune system. “Five years is a short time in asthma history”, Reibman says; she wants to know what will happen as the children mature. Don’t worry so much about washing their hands. But a lot of questions need to be answered before that can happen.

But if the researchers added a mixture of the four missing microbes to the mice’s digestive tracts along with the feces, the mice no longer had a heightened risk of developing asthma.

Finlay said the researchers “were all blow away by how early in life” the difference occurred.

Most infants get these bacteria naturally from the environment. For Turvey, that means that pediatricians should continue to be vigilant when they prescribe antibiotics to infants.