Photo credit: Dr. Iliyan Iliev, left, with Dr. Xin Li, right. Photo provided.
Common drug treatments that lead to changes in gut fungi can persistently exacerbate allergic airway diseases such as asthma, according to a study by Weill Cornell Medicine researchers.
The study, published online Nov. 29 in Cell Host & Microbe, suggests that the enormous modern prevalence of allergic airway diseases may be attributable in part to the widespread use of antimicrobials, including antifungals and other therapies that disrupt the normal balance between bacterial and fungal species in the gut.
“We were able to identify gut-resident immune cells that sense fungal community imbalance in the intestines and transmit these immune signals to the lung contributing to aggravated allergy,” said senior study author Dr. Iliyan D. Iliev, an assistant professor of immunology in medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and a researcher in the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Weill Cornell Medicine. To read more...