FLICKR, DEAN HOCHMANBabies born with a specific immune phenotype appear more likely than infants without it to develop food allergies a year later, researchers from Australia and China showed in Science Translational Medicine this week (January 14). Allergy-prone newborns, the scientists found, are born with certain immune cells that are primed to cause inflammation.
“We need to do the work and see whether this signature at birth is still present when the kids actually have established disease,” study coauthor Peter Vuillermin of Deakin University in Victoria, Australia, told The Scientist.
“It’s fairly well known that there are T-cell changes associated with food allergy,” said M. Cecilia Berin of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City who was not involved in the research. “[This study] really identifies the contribution of the innate immune system upstream of T-cell dysregulation.”
WIKIMEDIA, POGREBNOJ-ALEXANDROFFMice transplanted with human gut microbes experienced significant declines in bacterial species diversity when fed a low-fiber diet, according to a study published in Nature this week (January 14). Investigators at Stanford University and their colleagues also found that decimated microbe populations are “able to bloom when the dietary fiber is brought back,” said study coauthor Justin Sonnenburg of Stanford.
Peter Turnbaugh of the University of California, San Francisco, pointed out that ...
