THE BIOME BUZZ
BUGS AND WORMS AND OTHER GREAT STUFF
Tag: asthma
The Two Sides of Bacteroides fragilis
Back in May, 2018, I wrote about Bacteriodes fragilis (B. fragilis), a species of bacteria some strains of which are toxic, some of which are highly beneficial. The main thrust of that post was about how our immune system, when functioning properly, can recognize…
Allergy and Asthma Risk in Children: A Gut Bacteria Metabolite Culprit Identified
Two weeks ago, I wrote about a retrospective study out of Loyola University in which researchers looked at the relationship of the early introduction of antibiotics to the development of allergy and asthma. If you recall, they found, “Exposure to these medicines in their…
Antibiotics in Early Childhood: The Road to Asthma and Allergy
When my son was just 36 hours old, he was re-hospitalized with a fever and put onto 5 days of IV antibiotics. (You can read more about his history here.) He was given more oral antibiotics right before his first birthday. Once I learned…
Introducing Archaea: Another Important Member of Your Inner Ecosystem
It’s not often that I get to write about the more esoteric members of our gut biomes. Our bacteria get the most hype in the scientific literature, but as you all know, there are many other kinds of residents of our inner ecosystems. I…
The “Hygiene Hypothesis” – A Phrase Whose Time Has Passed
Dr. William Parker of Duke University Medical School, an eminent researcher into the effects of helminths on the immune system among other specialties, wrote a commentary in 2014 in the British Medical Journal entitled, The “hygiene hypothesis” for allergic disease is a misnomer.[i] His…
More Evidence for Industrialization Leading to Biome Depletion
Earlier this week, I wrote about a couple of new articles in the lay press about helminths. When I posted this on Facebook, one of my readers commented that it reminded her of a blog post from this past November, about how the loss…
Helminths in the Lay Press: A Few Interesting Tidbits
A couple of articles about helminths have appeared recently in the lay press that struck me for various reasons. While it’s always great to see helminth therapy getting good press, unfortunately, there tends to be misinformation printed that can often do more harm than…
Pre/Neonatal Probiotics and the Avoidance of Eczema and Allergies
Yet another article[i] was just published showing that dealing with inflammation issues while a baby is still in the womb can make a huge difference on the risk of atopic (allergic) illnesses. In this case, researchers in New Zealand gave 474 pregnant (starting at…
More on Boosting Levels of Short-Chain Fatty Acids
While I’m on the subject of butyrate… An article[i] was published in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics that caught my attention. Researchers tested the efficacy of a probiotic (one I had never heard of) called, Symprove . One of the big issues often raised about…
Allergies, Asthma, Antibiotics, Antacids…and Children
About 20 years ago, I was sitting in a waiting room at a doctor’s office and spotted an article in one of the magazines (maybe Time or Newsday?) on the coffee table that described recent research that showed that antibiotic use in the first…
