Growing up on a farm provides protection against asthma and allergies
Significant insights for development of vaccine against asthma
2015-09-03
(Press-News.org) Researchers at VIB (a leading life sciences institute in Flanders, Belgium) and Ghent University have successfully established a causal relationship between exposure to so-called farm dust and protection against asthma and allergies. This breakthrough discovery is a major step forward towards the development of an asthma vaccine. The results of the research were published in the leading journal Science.
It is commonly known that drinking raw cow's milk can provide protection against allergies. A 14-member research team, led by professors Bart Lambrecht and Hamida Hammad (both associated with VIB and Ghent University) has now established a solid scientific basis for this claim.
Promising tests on mice
Many years ago, it was found that children growing up on farms are far better protected against asthma and allergies. However, until recently, scientists were unable to pinpoint why this is the case.
Prof. Bart Lambrecht (VIB/Ghent University/Ghent University Hospital): "At this point, we have revealed an actual link between farm dust and protection against asthma and allergies. We did this by exposing mice to farm dust extract from Germany and Switzerland. These tests revealed that the mice were fully protected against house dust mite allergy, the most common cause for allergies in humans."
Significant role of protein A20
In addition to the causal relationship, the scientists discovered the mechanism behind this: farm dust makes the mucous membrane inside the respiratory tracts react less severely to allergens such as house dust mite.
Prof. Hamida Hammad (VIB/Ghent University): "This effect is created by the A20 protein, which the body produces upon contact with farm dust. When we inactivate the A20 protein in the mucous membrane of the lungs, farm dust is no longer able to reduce an allergic or asthmatic reaction."
Tests in patients
These findings were then tested in patients. The results showed that people suffering from allergies and asthma have a deficiency in the protective protein A20. It explains why they react to allergens so severely.
Prof. Bart Lambrecht (VIB/Ghent University/Ghent University Hospital): "We also assessed a test group of 2,000 children growing up on farms, and found that most of them are protected. Those who are not protected and still develop allergies have a genetic variant of the A20 gene which causes the A20 protein to malfunction."
Clear prospects for the future
The team's conclusions have opened up several possibilities for future research. At the moment, they are trying to identify the active substance in farm dust that is responsible for providing protection. Once this has been identified, the development of a preventive medicine against asthma may be the next step.
Prof. Hamida Hammad (VIB/Ghent University): "We already suspect that to some extent, the answer lies in the endotoxines, which form part of the cell wall of specific bacteria. There are very likely other contributing substances as well. Discovering how farm dust provides this type of protection has certainly put us on the right track towards developing an asthma vaccine and new allergy therapies. However, several years of research are required still before they will be available to patients."
INFORMATION:
The research was conducted at the VIB Inflammation Research Center, UGent, in partnership with researchers from Munich, Rotterdam and Marseille.
Questions
Given that this research can raise many questions, we would like to refer your questions in your report or article to the email address that the VIB has made available for this purpose. All questions regarding this and other medical research can be directed to: patients@vib.be.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-09-03
Evidence from a new study published in PLOS Computational Biology by researchers from Brown University and led by Assistant Professor Thomas Serre suggests that when we analyze scenery we simply make the easiest judgments first, rather than following a priority order of categories.
There are many ways we understand scenery. Is it navigable or obstructed? Natural or man-made? A face or not a face? In previous experiments, researchers have found that some categorization tasks seem special, in that they occur earlier than others, leading to a hypothesis that the brain has ...
2015-09-03
Rodents huddle together when it is cold, they separate when it is warm, and at moderate temperatures they cycle between the warm center and the cold edges of the group. In a new study published in PLOS Computational Biology, Jonathan Glancy, Roderich Gross, Jim Stone and Stuart Wilson from the University of Sheffield found they could simulate huddling by assuming simply that touching individuals in turn brings their temperatures closer to an ideal body temperature. According to the model, these selfish individual behaviours improved the ability of the whole group to regulate ...
2015-09-03
Why aren't there more lions? That was what puzzled McGill PhD student Ian Hatton, when he started looking at the proportion of predators to prey across dozens of parks in East and Southern Africa. In this case, the answer had nothing to do with isolated human hunters. The parks were teeming with potentially tasty treats for the lions. So one might imagine that the population of lions in each park would increase to match the available prey. Instead, what Hatton and the McGill-led team discovered was that, in a very systematic way, in crowded settings, prey reproduced less ...
2015-09-03
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (September 3, 2015) - A protein known to play a role in transporting the molecular contents of normal cells into and out of various intracellular compartments can also turn such cells cancerous by stimulating a key growth-control pathway.
By conducting a large-scale search for regulators of the signaling pathway known as PI3K/AKT, which promotes cell survival, growth, and proliferation--and which is highly active in cancer cells--researchers at Whitehead Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have implicated the protein RAB35 in the oncogenic ...
2015-09-03
For millions of years, the Pacific and North American plates have been sliding past -- and crashing into -- one another. This ongoing conflict creates uplift, the geological phenomenon that formed mountains along the west coast.
A new analysis by UC Santa Barbara earth scientist Alex Simms demonstrates that the Pacific coastlines of North America are not uplifting as rapidly as previously thought. The results appear in the journal Geological Society of America Bulletin.
"Current models overestimate uplift rates by an average of 40 percent," said Simms, an associate ...
2015-09-03
Hurricane Jimena, a once powerful Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds estimated at 140 mph by the National Hurricane Center, has continued to weaken well east of Hawaii. The Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellite analyzed rainfall rates and saw the eyewall was eroding.
The eyewall of a hurricane contains a storm's most damaging winds and intense rainfall. It consists of a vertical wall of powerful thunderstorms circling a hurricane's open eye.
GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA. GPM captured data on Jimena ...
2015-09-03
The world is facing an extinction crisis as more and more forests are converted into farmland. But does it help when farms share the land with birds and other animals?
The short answer is "no," according to new evidence based on the diversity of bird species reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 3. If the goal is to preserve more bird species, representing a greater span of evolutionary history, then it's better to farm more intensively in some areas while leaving more blocks of land entirely alone. In other words, land-sparing wins out over ...
2015-09-03
High levels of saturated fat in the blood could make an individual more prone to inflammation and tissue damage, a new study suggests.
Received wisdom on the health risks of eating saturated fat has been called into question recently. This new research supports the view that excessive consumption of saturated fat can be bad for us.
Scientists from Imperial College London studied mice that have an unusually high level of saturated fat circulating in their blood. The research, published today (3 September 2015) in Cell Reports shows that the presence of saturated fats ...
2015-09-03
Giving cancer patients aspirin at the same time as immunotherapy could dramatically boost the effectiveness of the treatment, according to new research published in the journal Cell today (Thursday).
Francis Crick Institute researchers, funded by Cancer Research UK, have shown that skin, breast and bowel cancer cells often produce large amounts of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). This molecule dampens down the immune system's normal response to attack faulty cells, which helps cancer to hide. It is a trick that allows the tumour to thrive and may explain why some immunotherapy ...
2015-09-03
LAWRENCE - Men might want to ditch the pickup lines and polish their punchlines in their quest to attract women, new research at the University of Kansas suggests.
Jeffrey Hall, associate professor of communication studies, found that when two strangers meet, the more times a man tries to be funny and the more a woman laughs at those attempts, the more likely it is for the woman to be interested in dating. However, an even better indicator of romantic connection is if the two are spotted laughing together.
Those findings were among the discoveries Hall made in his search ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Growing up on a farm provides protection against asthma and allergies
Significant insights for development of vaccine against asthma
