Allergies with different diagnoses and symptoms have something in common at the cellular level
Gut bacterial imbalance in 592 children diagnosed with allergies out of 1115
Antibiotics within the first year of life – Allergy ↑ Breastfeeding for the first 6 months – Allergy ↓

Many parents suffer from their children’s allergies. An allergy that can provide only temporary relief but is difficult to treat fundamentally. However, a common cause of major childhood allergies was recently discovered by Canadian scientists. This could lead to ways to predict and prevent allergies in children.

Newborn baby / Photo credit – Pripick

According to the paper ‘Delayed gut microbiota maturation in the first year of life is a hallmark of pediatric allergic disease’ published in the academic journal Nature on the 29th of last month, a common major allergy occurs when intestinal bacteria do not reach a stable colony during the first year of life. If you don’t, your chances of getting sick increase.

Allergies with different diagnoses, such as atopy, asthma, food, and pollen allergy, are studied individually because each has its own unique list of symptoms, said Charisse Petersen, Ph.D., co-senior author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow in Turvey’s lab. “If you look at what’s going wrong at the cellular level, there’s actually a lot in common,” he said.

▲Atopic dermatitisis an inflammatory skin eczema disease that usually begins in infancy or childhood. Atopy, also called ‘tae-yeol’, is characterized by severe itching and extreme sensitivity to external stimuli. The frequency of occurrence decreases as one grows, but it may become chronic, repeating improvement and deterioration until adulthood.

▲Asthmais an airway obstruction disease that occurs when exposure to certain allergic substances causes the bronchial tubes to become severely narrowed due to inflammation, causing repeated coughing, wheezing, and difficulty breathing. It reacts to various substances such as pollen, mold, animals, perfume, and food odors.

▲Food allergyis a disease that causes hypersensitivity to certain foods, such as hives, sneezing, angioedema, asthma, and shock. Reactive substances such as meat, dairy products, eggs, nuts, crustaceans, peaches, tomatoes, etc. vary from person to person, but proteins contained in food are usually considered the problem.

▲Pollen allergyis an allergic respiratory disease that causes rhinitis, conjunctivitis, dermatitis, and asthma when the causative agent, pollen, enters through the nose or airways. According to Asan Medical Center, pollen from cedar, alder, and birch trees is the main cause, and it occurs especially frequently in May. Chrysanthemums, asters, daisies, and wild mugwort flowers can cause dermatitis. Symptoms may worsen on warm, dry mornings or when it is rainy or windy.

The study, led by researchers at the University of British Columbia and BC Children’s Hospital, is one of the first studies to examine four different allergies in school-aged children at once. The researchers wondered whether the different diagnoses of allergy had a common cause related to the composition of the infant’s intestinal tract.

Data collection of clinical assessments and biological samples from CHILD participants – Schedule for enrollment and clinical assessment of children from conception to 5-year assessment. b Diagram of the combination of child participants and samples included in this study, including the composition and interrelated diagnoses of participant allergic diseases. Produced by Biorender.com / Photo source – nature

Researchers examined the clinical evaluations of 1,115 people who were followed from birth until age 5. 523 children had no allergies, and 592 had been diagnosed with one or more allergic diseases. The microbiome was assessed in stool samples collected when the children were 3 months old and 1 year old.

As a result, we found that the intestinal flora or microorganisms were unbalanced in a group of children diagnosed with allergies. These signs most likely indicate damage to the intestinal lining and increased inflammatory response in the intestine.

‘Our bodies maintain a strong barrier between the millions of bacteria and immune cells in the gut and limit inflammatory signaling,’ says Dr. Stuart Turvey, professor of pediatrics at UBC, BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute investigator and co-senior investigator. “We found that this mechanism commonly breaks down in babies before they develop.”

The research team investigated how factors such as diet, birth method, residence, and antibiotic exposure affected the balance of intestinal microorganisms and the development of allergies. Dr. Turvey found opposing effects of antibiotic use in the first year of his life and breastfeeding during the first six months of life in this analysis.

Antibiotic use in the first year of life increases the risk of allergy, and breastfeeding during the first six months is protective.

That is, antibiotic use in the first year of life was associated with a higher likelihood of developing allergic disease later in life, while breastfeeding during the first six months was protective against allergies. This was common to all allergic diseases.

“If we develop treatments that change these interactions in early childhood, we can prevent all kinds of lifelong allergic diseases,” Turvey said.

The research team hoped to use the results of this study to develop treatments that could correct imbalanced gut microbiota and potentially prevent the development of allergies.

Chemical News reporter Park Chan-seo

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2023-09-10 23:39:54

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