Bacteria on Farms May Protect Against Asthma
Study Shows Children Exposed to Microbes on Farms Have Lower Asthma Risk Than Other Kids
Vaccine Potential
Recent advances in the field, including the development of high-speed DNA sequencing devices and chip-based probes, will allow researchers to sequence much larger amounts of genetic material faster.
“With these technologies, we will be able to find 100 times more bacteria than were found in these studies,” he says.
The hope is that these studies will identify the specific microbes that protect against asthma, and that this will lead to vaccines or other treatments to prevent children from developing it.
“In the past we have thought that asthma results from contact with something bad in the environment, like tobacco smoke or air pollution,” Gern says. “While that may be true, it appears that there are also environmental factors that protect against asthma. That is very exciting.”