IGI Seminar Series: Microbial Future Proofing: How Infant Microbiomes Shape Childhood Allergy and Asthma

The prevalence of allergy and asthma has increased significantly over the last several decades. This is particularly true in industrialized nations where early life environmental exposures are strong predictors of disease development in later childhood. Studies examining both the infant gut and the airway microbiota have now demonstrated that early life perturbations in microbiome composition and metabolic productivity precedes allergy and asthma development in later childhood. Functional studies based on these observations has led to the identification of specific gut microbial genes and products in the infant gut microbiome that not only predict disease development in childhood but also drive maladaptive immunity characteristic of established disease. These studies suggest that interventions to engineer early life microbiomes may prevent allergy and asthma development.