Researchers are investigating how infant antibiotic use affects the airway and gut microbiome, which could inform interventions to reduce childhood asthma risk in children needing antibiotics in early life.
RT’s Three Key Takeaways:
- Grant to Explore Asthma Prevention: Vanderbilt researchers received a $4.1 million grant to study the effects of infant antibiotic use on asthma development.
- Focus on Microbiome Disruption: The research aims to understand how antibiotics alter the infant microbiome and increase the risk of asthma, with the goal of identifying a critical window for intervention.
- Potential for Microbiome-Based Therapies: Findings could lead to the development of probiotics or other microbiome-based treatments to safely administer antibiotics in early life while reducing asthma risk.
The use of antibiotics in the first year of life has been found to be a risk factor for the development of childhood asthma. What is not known is how to protect children from the long-term effects of infant antibiotic use.
Researchers at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt are seeking to determine the age when infants are most susceptible to the risk of developing childhood asthma once exposed to antibiotics and the pathways through which infant antibiotic use can increase the risk childhood asthma onset.
“There are currently no strategies to prevent asthma, the most common chronic lung disease in children,” says Christian Rosas-Salazar, MD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics, allergy, immunology, pulmonary medicine at Monroe Carell, in a release. “Understanding the mechanisms that lead to asthma in children who receive antibiotics in early life can help us develop interventions to prevent this condition.
“By examining how antibiotics can disrupt an infant’s microbiome and identifying a critical window of opportunity to intervene, the ultimate goal of this project is to inform the design of microbiome-based therapeutics, such as probiotics and/or bacterial products that can help deliver antibiotics safely during early life and reduce the burden of childhood asthma.”
Exploring the Effects of Antibiotics on Infant Development
Rosas-Salazar received $4.1 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to conduct a five-year study, “Effect of infant antibiotics on the development of early-life airway and gut microbiome and risk of childhood asthma,” where his team will use available data and biospecimens collected from several birth cohorts from across the country that are part of the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes Program of the National Institutes of Health.
Results from previous studies indicate that the association of antibiotic exposure early in childhood and the risk of developing asthma is likely due to changes in the human microbiome, but the techniques utilized couldn’t accurately identify relevant bacterial species or functions.
Rosas-Salazar says that is critical in designing interventions to prevent long-term detrimental effects of infant antibiotic use.
“Our objective is to address a critical and unmet need,” says Rosas-Salazar. “The findings could be used to develop microbiome-based interventions to prevent childhood asthma in children needing antibiotics in early life.”
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