clair088

The health of our modern society is being threatened by a plethora of chronic inflammatory non-communicable diseases (NCDs) which share in common, an underlying low-grade inflammation. These include early onset NCDs such as allergy, asthma and some autoimmune diseases and later onset NCDs including cardiovascular disease (CVD), metabolic disease and neurodegenerative disorders. While inflammation and the pathways to disease are multifactorial, the altered gut colonization patterns associated with declining microbial diversity is a central theme, and increasingly implicated in the physiological, immunological and metabolic dysregulation seen in many NCDs. Upon review of the current literature, West et al discuss the relationships between gut colonization and inflammatory NCDs, and gut microbiota modulation strategies for their treatment and prevention ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2015; 135: 3-13 ). The critical role of the gut microbiota in immune development has been well documented in ge...

Newly developed culture-independent methods for microbial detection are deepening the understanding of their role in lung disease. A persuasive body of evidence suggests that the microbiome of the lower airways differs distinctly in the obstructive lung disease, including asthma. Huang and Boushey provide their perspective on the findings of studies of differences in the airway microbiome in patients with asthma vs. healthy subjects, and of studies of relationships between environmental microbiota, gut microbiota, immune function, and the development of asthma ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2015; 135: 25-30 ). Additionally, they provide a rationale for approaches involving directed manipulation of the gut and airway microbiome for treatment and prevention of allergic asthma. Alterations in respiratory tract immune function are at least theoretically linked to the immunomodulatory activity of gut microbiota through the concept of a “common mucosal response”. This proposes that antigen present...

Chronic inflammatory diseases, including allergies and asthma, are the result of complex interactions between the genetic predisposition and environmental factors.  Epigenetics comprises the umbrella of such biochemical reactions and mechanisms including DNA methylation and chromatin modifications on histones and other structures. In their review, Harb and Renz review the recent developments in this context with emphasis on allergy and asthma research ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2015; 135: 15-24 ) . There are many different epigenetic modifications affecting the status of the transcription of genes. For example, epigenetic modifications of T-cells start very early during the activation/differentiation program with naïve non-committed precursors during fetal immune development. DNA methylation is a biochemical process by the addition of a methyl group to the DNA nucleotides cysteine or adenine. This process leads mainly to gene silencing and subsequently to the inhibition of gene trans...