Abstract
Introduction and Aims: Growing up in farm environment protects from asthma. The protective effect has been associated with special microbial exposures. Our aim in here was to test whether farm home microbiota could provide a model for asthma-protective indoor microbiome that would be protective also in a non-farm environment.
Methods: We first modelled differences in house dust microbiota composition between farm and non-farm homes of 204 Finnish children. Association between asthma risk by age 6 years and modelled similarity of indoor microbiota to that in farm homes in early life was then analyzed in a second Finnish birth cohort of 182 children not living on farms. Results were replicated in a cross-sectional study of 1031 German children.
Results: The asthma risk in children who grew up in non-farm homes decreased as the similarity of their early home microbiota to farm home microbiota increased (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0.40 per interquartile range [IQR] increase in modelled similarity; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.19 to 0.82). The protective microbiota was low in Streptococcaceae relative to outdoor-associated taxa, increased e.g. by siblings and walking indoors with outdoor shoes. Also the asthma risk of German children decreased with the increasing similarity of their home microbiota to the microbiota in Finnish farm homes (aOR 0.65 per IQR increase in modelled similarity; 95% CI 0.46-0.91).
Conclusions: These results identify the indoor dust microbiota composition as a definable, reproducible predictor of asthma risk and a novel modifiable target for asthma prevention.
Footnotes
Cite this article as: European Respiratory Journal 2018 52: Suppl. 62, OA337.
This is an ERS International Congress abstract. No full-text version is available. Further material to accompany this abstract may be available at www.ers-education.org (ERS member access only).
- Copyright ©the authors 2018