SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submission Preview
Gut Bacteria Predict Asthma in Kids
Just four types of gut bacteria in the stool seem to make all the difference, predicting which babies will get Asthma later in life, and which children won’t, researchers say. The finding could help identify children at high risk of asthma, and it could also lead to the development of probiotic mixtures that prevent the disease.
For years there have been hints that the microbiome—the collection of bacteria and viruses that live in the human body at an early age, may be involved in the eventual development of Asthma. There are no tests to prove it, and no causal mechanism has been found, but years of epidemiological data hinted that this might be the case.
As part of the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) study, a team collected stool and urine samples from more than 300 babies at 3 months and 1 year old, as well as information on their health at 1, 3, and 5 years.
Then, they used high-throughput genetic sequencing to detect levels of gut microbes in each stool sample. Babies that had low or undetectable levels of four bacteria—Lachnospira, Veillonella, Faecalibacterium, and Rothia—at 3 months old all went on to show early signs of asthma—wheezing and skin allergies—at a year old. The babies who didn’t develop these symptoms invariably had high levels of the four microbes in their 3-month stool samples.
That was half of the study. The other half was to determine if seeding the missing bacteria into the gut could prevent Asthma.
Next, the group used stool samples from the asthma-prone 3-month-olds to colonize the guts of mice that had been raised in a bacteria-free environment. The animals went on to develop inflamed lungs indicative of asthma. But if the researchers added a mixture of the four missing microbes to the mice’s digestive tracts along with the stool samples, the mice no longer had a heightened risk of developing asthma.
So even if the mechanism isn't understood, the presence of certain gut bacteria seem prevent Asthma. Unfortunately the researchers can't go around seeding stool samples into the guts of babies, and significant work will be necessary to come up with a safe treatment to naturally grow the needed bacteria,
The story appeared on ScienceMag's [sciencemag.org] website.
