Interesting reads

Extracted from Mind Your Body dated 17th October

Asthma linked to throat bugs in newborns
Month-old infants harbouring certain types of throat bacteria may have defective immune response that puts them at risk

Newborns who harbour certain types of bacteria in their throats, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, a common cause of pneumonia, and Haemophilus influenzae, which causes upper respiratory infections, are at increased risk of developing recurrent wheeze or asthma early in life, new research shows.

This finding 'opens new perspectives for the understanding and prediction of recurrent wheeze and asthma in young children,' lead author DrHans Bisgaard, from Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, and his colleagues conclude in their report in The New England Journal of Medicine for Oct11.

The researchers assessed the development of recurrent wheeze and asthma in 321 newborns who had throat cultures taken at one month of age, and who were then followed through to five years of age.

Twenty-one per cent of infants were colonised with Spneumoniae, Hinfluenzae, another type of bacteria called Mcatarrhalis, or a combination of these bugs, and this finding more than doubled the risk of persistent wheeze, wheeze flare-up and hospitalisation for wheeze.

The prevalence of asthma at age five was significantly increased in the children who harboured these organisms as newborns compared with children who did not (33per cent versus 10per cent), the investigators reported.

In a related editorial, DrErika von Mutius, from the University Children's Hospital in Munich, Germany, comments that these findings may be interpreted to suggest that the presence and growth of bacteria in the throat in the first four weeks of life 'indicate a defective innate immune response very early in life, which promotes the development of asthma'.

Thus, she adds, the researchers 'may have found an interesting and new sentinel rather than a causative signal'.

- REUTERS

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