"This research supports the hygiene hypothesis that we're making our environment too clean," said Brett Finlay, professor at the University of British Columbia and co-lead researcher of a paper published in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine.
"It shows that gut bacteria play a role in asthma, but it is early in life when the baby's immune system is being established," Finlay added.
The discovery opens the door to developing probiotic treatments for infants that prevent asthma and could also be used to develop a test for predicting which children are at risk of developing asthma, they said.
Asthma rates have increased dramatically since the 1950s and now affect up to 20 percent of children in developed countries, but ironically they have not increased in developing countries or poorer countries.
In the new study, researchers analyzed fecal samples from 319 children involved in the Canadian healthy infant longitudinal development study.
By Ruchi Singh
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
