{"id":157217,"date":"2019-12-16T12:17:10","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T17:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=157217"},"modified":"2019-12-16T12:18:36","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T17:18:36","slug":"asthma-severity-linked-microbiome-upper-airway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/12\/asthma-severity-linked-microbiome-upper-airway\/","title":{"rendered":"Asthma Severity Linked to Microbiome of Upper Airway"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new study suggests there is a link between bacteria that live in the upper airway and the severity of asthma symptoms among children with mild to moderate asthma. The findings appear Dec. 16 in the journal Nature Communications.<\/a><\/p>\n

The study was led by Dr. Avraham Beigelman<\/a> of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and UConn School of Medicine\u2019s Dr. Yanjiao Zhou<\/a>, who conducted postdoctoral microbiome and bioinformatics research at Washington University before joining the UConn faculty.<\/p>\n

The study raises the possibility that the airway\u2019s microbiome could have a causal role in the severity of asthma symptoms. The research paves the way for future studies to discover whether altering the types of bacteria that live in the upper airway could help patients with asthma.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an urgent need to develop better asthma therapies for these patients,\u201d said senior author\u00a0Beigelman<\/a>, an associate professor of pediatrics at Washington University. \u201cThough our study can\u2019t prove causation, it raises intriguing questions that we plan to pursue. If we somehow supplement such patients with what appear to be good bacteria, will they do better? We are interested in studying whether we can deliberately alter the airway microbiome to reduce the risk of worsening asthma symptoms.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the U.S., more than 6 million children under age 18 have asthma, or about 1 in 12. It is the leading chronic pediatric disease and the No. 1 reason for missed school days, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.<\/p>\n

The researchers found that children who experienced early warning signs that their asthma was going to flare up were more likely to have bacteria associated with disease – including Staphylococcus<\/em>, Streptococcus<\/em> and Moraxella<\/em> bacterial groups \u2014 living in their upper airways. In contrast, airway microbes dominated by Corynebacterium<\/em> and Dolosigranulum<\/em>\u00a0bacteria were associated with periods of good health, when asthma was well-controlled.<\/p>\n

Researchers also found that children whose airway microbial communities switched from being dominated by\u00a0Corynebacterium<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Dolosigranulum<\/em>\u00a0bacteria to being dominated by\u00a0Moraxella<\/em>\u00a0bacteria were at the highest risk of worsening asthma symptoms compared with children whose microbial communities made any other kind of shift.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur data demonstrated a rapid change of the airway microbiome in the children who transitioned from respiratory health to disease,\u201d said first author Zhou<\/a> of UConn School of Medicine. \u201cIt is also intriguing to find that the microbiome changing pattern could play an important role in asthma exacerbation. We are planning future studies to explore this possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

The upper airway microbiome study was conducted in conjunction with a clinical trial involving 214 children ages 5 to 11 with mild to moderate asthma. The trial \u2014 called Step Up Yellow Zone Inhaled Corticosteroids to Prevent Exacerbations (STICS) \u2014 was conducted as part of AsthmaNet, a national network of medical centers conducting asthma research funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).<\/p>\n

The clinical trial\u2019s purpose was to determine whether quintupling the dose of an inhaled corticosteroid at the first signs of worsening asthma was better than keeping a low dose of the same medication. The trial found no benefit to the larger dose, and those results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2018.<\/p>\n

During that trial, the researchers also collected nasal mucus samples from the children to study their upper airway microbiomes. Samples were collected at the beginning of the trial, when all of the participants had controlled asthma, as well as at the first early signs that asthma control was slipping.<\/p>\n

Based on these findings, Beigelman and Zhou said they plan to conduct laboratory studies with carefully controlled airway microbiomes to see if the researchers can uncover a causal role for bacteria in asthma severity. In addition, such experiments could allow them to test different interventions that might deliberately alter the upper airway bacteria in a way that could be protective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study raises question of whether altering bacteria in the airway could help asthma patients. Learn more about the new findings published in Nature Communications by Washington University in St. Louis and UConn School of Medicine researchers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":134915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-157217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 06:38:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/134915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157217"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=157217"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=157217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}