Scientists are investigating “cocktails” of beneficial microbes as therapy in infants because the appropriate combination of gut bacteria may prevent later allergic reaction.
Around 2007, I stopped sending my kids to school with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. when was around the time when people began talking about a major increase in the number of youngsters with severe nut allergies. Since then, there has been an upsurge in the number of children suffering from various allergies. Since the 1980s, the prevalence of asthma has risen, and more than one-quarter of children suffer from eczema, food allergies, hay fever, or other seasonal allergens.
Around 2007, I stopped sending my children to school with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When did people start talking about a significant increase in the number of children with severe nut allergies? Since then, the number of children with allergies has increased significantly. Since the 1980s, the prevalence of asthma has increased, and more than a quarter of children have eczema, food allergies, hay fever, or other seasonal allergens.
This notion, proposed decades ago as the “hygiene hypothesis” and developed over time, is supported by epidemiological studies that suggest that having elder siblings, going to day care, living on a farm, and having pets protect against allergies. However, more antiseptic early lives—delivery by cesarean section, no breast milk, and antibiotic therapy in the first year of life—appear to raise risk.
Now, more information is emerging that reveals how bacteria in children’s stomachs might cause allergies. Scientists are determining how the presence or absence of specific bacteria in children’s digestive systems influences allergy risk, thanks to technical advancements that allow researchers to identify more types of gut microbes. Someday, it may be feasible to replace specific microorganisms in children and the general population, reducing people’s sensitivity to allergies.
infants’s gut microbiomes in infancy differ from those of infants who do not develop allergies or asthma. “Children who are at the highest risk are missing important health-promoting bacteria in that first year of life,” says Stuart Turvey, a pediatric immunologist at the University of British Columbia and British Columbia Children’s Hospital.
Helpful gut bacteria seem to reduce allergic disease in kids
Among other reasons, the presence of certain harmless bacteria early on creates a favorable environment for other, beneficial bacteria to follow in regular waves. If the initial “keystone” bacteria are absent, subsequent rounds of colonization are delayed or disturbed. “Microbial exposures in early childhood can really shape the immune system in ways that they can’t much later in life,” says Supinda Bunyavanich, a pediatric allergist and immunologist at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Turvey and his colleagues discovered in a 2023 study of over 1,100 children that children with these microbiome disturbances at age one were more likely to be diagnosed with eczema, food allergies, allergic rhinitis, or asthma by age five. “Not every kid gets all four [diagnoses], but often the kids who had two or more had a more pronounced microbiome imbalance signature,” he said.
Mice studies have helped researchers discover which microorganisms are particularly influential and why. Talal Chatila, a specialist in the food allergy division at Boston Children’s Hospital, discovered that administering allergy-prone mice bacteria from the Clostridiales and Bacteroidales orders prevented the animals from acquiring food allergies. “Particular microbes within a healthy gut act to suppress allergic responses,” Chatila said. One way they accomplish this is by encouraging the development of regulatory T cells, which aid in the control of immune system responses.
Reference Article- Helpful Gut Bacteria Seem to Reduce Allergic Disease in Kids
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