WIKIMEDIA, BEV SYKESA pet dog can bring joy, companionship, and security to a home. It could also change the microbes in your gut.
Susan Lynch from the University of California, San Francisco, has shown that cohabitating with a dog can increase the diversity of bacteria in house dust. When she fed this bacteria-rich dust to mice, it shifted the microbes in their guts towards species that prevented their immune systems from overreacting to airborne allergens. The team also showed that a single bacterial species could duplicate many of these benefits.
The results are published today (December 16) in PNAS. If Lynch’s findings can be confirmed in humans, they could guide the development of probiotics for infants, which could reduce the risk of allergic conditions later in life.
Lynch was inspired by a decade-old study showing that people who spent their first year of life in a household with ...
