Asthma linked to bacterial communities in the airway
February 18th, 2011 - 2:57 pm ICT by ANIWashington, Feb 18 (ANI): A new UCSF-led study has found that asthma may have a surprising relationship with the composition of the species of bacteria that inhabit bronchial airways.
This finding could suggest new treatment or even potential cures for the common inflammatory disease.
Using new detection methods, researchers learned that the diversity of microbes inside the respiratory tract is far vaster than previously suspected - creating a complex and inter-connected microbial neighborhood that appears to be associated with asthma, and akin to what has also been found in inflammatory bowel disease, vaginitis, periodontitis, and possibly even obesity.
“People thought that asthma was caused by inhalation of allergens but this study shows that it may be more complicated than that - asthma may involve colonization of the airways by multiple bacteria,’ said study co-author Homer Boushey, MD, a UCSF professor of medicine in the division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.
In their three-year pilot project, the scientists collected samples from the airway linings of 65 adults with mild to moderate asthma and 10 healthy subjects. Then, using a tool that can identify approximately 8,500 distinct groups of bacteria in a single assay, the scientists profiled the organisms present in each sample to look for relationships between bacterial community composition and clinical characteristics of the patients’ asthma.
The researchers found that bronchial airway samples from asthmatic patients contained far more bacteria than samples from healthy patients. The scientists also found greater bacterial diversity in the asthmatic patients who had the most hyper-responsive or sensitive airways (a feature of asthma).
The study has been published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. (ANI)
- Biodiversity loss can trigger rising allergy levels - May 08, 2012
- Delayed symptoms ravage asthmatics - Aug 14, 2011
- Culprit behind severe allergic asthma discovered - Aug 30, 2010
- Four novel biomarkers that may help diagnose asthma, COPD identified - Mar 12, 2011
- How pathogenic bacteria hide inside host cells - Jan 27, 2011
- Allergies 'a consequence of asthma, not cause of it' - Sep 24, 2010
- Cuban lab makes medicine from banana peel - Apr 28, 2012
- Fish oil may also lower incidence of gum disease - Oct 26, 2010
- Prevent gum disease to keep lungs healthy - Jan 19, 2011
- Kicking the butt beneficial for asthmatics - Dec 07, 2009
- Cigarette smoking ups production of mucus in patients with bronchitis - Feb 18, 2011
- Intense exercise 'can produce asthma-like symptoms even in healthy kids' - May 19, 2010
- Cholesterol-lowering statins 'kill bacteria' - Nov 18, 2010
- Bacteria linked to asthma attacks in children - Oct 08, 2010
- Gene linked to childhood asthma identified - Dec 24, 2009
Tags: allergens, asthmatic patients, bacterial communities, bacterial diversity, clinical characteristics, co author, community composition, critical care medicine, distinct groups, inflammatory bowel disease, inflammatory disease, inhalation, microbes, moderate asthma, periodontitis, pilot project, respiratory tract, sensitive airways, species of bacteria, ucsf professor