Scientists, while working on Asthma in infants, have come out with an amazing observation. The guts of infants upto three months of age are found to show low levels of four specific types of bacteria and the same infants have high risk of being attacked by asthma. Asthma is a chronic lung disease that have been a reason of panic and pain for 300 million people in the world. If you consider the number of United States exclusively, then about 18.7 million people are victims of asthma disease. Owing to the increasing pollution in the environment, treatment of asthma is becoming difficult day by day.
So the low levels of specific bacteria and their relationship with asthma can be a deciding factors as which infants are prone to the disease or have the risk of being affected by it in future. Obviously this is a big discovery but the study is ought to have more far reaching effects. Since the low level of bacteria is an indication of the disease, scientists are working hard to find out if the same bacteria found in the gut of children can be used to prevent the disease.
Scientists have studied the infants at Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development study to see if they have a risk of developing asthma in future. 319 infants of about three months of age were studied for the observations.
Another study has found out that the bacteria found in the farm dust can trigger the immune system in order to fight back lung diseases like asthma. It has also been observed that infants who are treated with bacteria killing medicines often grows risk of having asthma.
“What I think is important and not so surprising to pediatricians was how important the very early life is,” says Stuart Turvey, pediatric immunologist at the University of British Columbia and a co-author of the study. “And our study emphasizes that in that first 100 days the structure of the gut microbiome seems to be very important in influencing the immune responses that cause or protect us from asthma.”
Life is indeed amazing that lets us unveil bits and pieces of the huge conundrum. Microbes which are often killed by medicines are the one which helps in the maintenance and regulation of the immune system that can prevent development of chronic diseases like asthma in the long run. Check out the video to know more about it.
