14 DAY TRIAL // A group of Canadian investigators report in EMBO that treating asthmatic mice with the antibiotic vancomycin resulted in an accentuation of their symptoms. In other words, the chemical made the problem worse, rather than solve it.
The study was conducted on allergic asthma, and its conclusions demonstrate that the hygiene hypothesis is correct. This idea suggests that a link exists between the onset of asthma and the loss of beneficial bacteria in the gut (the microbiota).
Official statistics indicate that as many as 100 million people around the world are suffering from this condition, which makes this type of research extremely important. Scientists believe that the main causes of asthma are the widespread use of antibiotics and excessive sanitation.
People who wash very often, and as soon as they are exposed to what they perceive as contaminants, leave their immune systems without anything to do. The last thing you want in your body is a hyperactive immune system that has nothing to fight against.
“We administered antibiotics to mice of different ages to determine if there was a link between the makeup of the microbial community in the gut and the extent of experimentally induced allergic asthma,” Dr. Brett Finlay explains, quoted by AlphaGalileo.
“Treatment of young mice with the antibiotic vancomycin reduced the diversity of microbes in the gut, significantly altered the composition of the bacterial population, and increased the susceptibility of young animals to experimentally induced asthma,” the expert adds.
Finlay holds an appointment as a professor with the University of British Columbia (UBC) Michael Smith Laboratories. He explains that the gut is populated by about 100 trillion bacteria, from as many as 1,000 different species. These microorganisms allow an increased resistance to the onset of diseases.
“Although the precise link between the immune responses in the gut and lung remain unclear, we think that vancomycin selects for a community of microbes in the gut that somehow disrupts the inflammatory and regulatory immune responses at the two different sites,” Finlay goes on to say.
“In mice, the restructuring of the intestinal microbial population during infancy after antibiotic treatment is enough to lead to exacerbated asthma,” he adds. The health of microbial populations in the gut should therefore be considered a factor in assessing asthma severity from now on.
The study implies that key immunological events that occur during an infant's first few months of life will determine their chances of developing asthma later on, as well as the severity of the disorder.