{"id":758848,"date":"2026-06-24T21:44:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T21:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/758848\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T21:44:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T21:44:41","slug":"gut-fungi-may-hold-the-key-to-treating-asthma-allergies-worldwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/758848\/","title":{"rendered":"Gut fungi may hold the key to treating asthma, allergies worldwide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Two new studies jointly published in Nature: The Clinical Microbiome reveal that certain species of fungi in the gut play a key role in the development of immune dysregulation and some childhood allergic diseases \u2014 and may be promising targets for new therapies.<\/p>\n

One paper<\/a> by UBC professor Dr. Stuart Turvey and colleagues demonstrates that fungi are informative markers of early-life microbial development and may indicate whether a child may develop diseases such as eczema (atopic dermatitis) and food allergy at five years of age.<\/p>\n

\u201cHundreds of millions of children worldwide are affected by allergic diseases, and the number is growing,\u201d says Dr. Stuart Turvey, senior author on the study, professor of pediatrics at the UBC Faculty of Medicine and investigator at BC Children\u2019s Hospital Research Institute. \u201cA better understanding of what gives rise to these conditions and how we can prevent them would have an enormous benefit for children around the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dr.Dr. Stuart Turvey<\/p>\n

Another paper<\/a> by Dr. Marie-Claire Arrieta and colleagues from the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases<\/a> and the Alberta Children\u2019s Hospital Research Institute<\/a> at the University of Calgary<\/a> found that infant antibiotic use may have a direct impact on certain yeast species, leading to immune dysregulation and allergic asthma.<\/p>\n

The jointly published articles together emphasize the importance of the fungal component of the gut microenvironment. The bacterial environment in the gut, known as the microbiome, has been well studied, with recent discoveries in this field leading to several potential new treatments. By comparison, very little research has been done on the fungal inhabitants of the gut \u2014 the mycobiome \u2014 and their role in disease and immune dysregulation.<\/p>\n

Dr. Turvey\u2019s study analyzed data from the CHILD Cohort Study<\/a> to identify the association between fungal species and immune dysregulation. By analyzing 2,256 samples from 1,409 participants in the first year of life, the team found that different fungal species show distinct population trajectories. Among the central players in infant gut fungal development, Saccharomycetaceae increased progressively over the first year, while Malassezia showed the opposite trend.<\/p>\n

The team then found that different frequencies of certain fungal species were associated with various immunological diseases. For example, Malassezia was more common in infants who later developed atopic dermatitis.<\/p>\n

Dr. Arrieta and her team took a different approach by directly investigating the effect of antibiotics on the mycobiome in a prospective clinical study of young infants less than 6 months of age. Treatment with antibiotics led to an increase in fungal species, particularly that of Malassezia, a group of fungi that is commonly found in the infant gut during early life. In subsequent mouse studies, the team showed that colonization with this fungus led to increased allergic inflammation of immune cells in the gut and the airways.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese results reveal a previously unrecognized pathway linking early-life antibiotic exposure to allergic disease risk and show how the developing immune system is shaped by fungi within the gut microbiome during a critical window of development,\u201d says Dr. Arrieta. \u201cAntibiotics are an essential treatment for young children when needed, but this study shows that there is a previously overlooked effect on the gut mycobiome, allowing species like Malassezia to flourish, and directly impacting immunological function.\u201d<\/p>\n

These concurrent studies underscore the ecological and immunological significance of Malassezia in early life, positioning the infant mycobiome as a promising target for therapies that could prevent immune dysregulation and pediatric allergic diseases.<\/p>\n

A version of this story was originally published on the BC Children\u2019s Hospital Research Institute website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two new studies jointly published in Nature: The Clinical Microbiome reveal that certain species of fungi in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2667,49,48,7296,84,5448,2668,44,994,6760],"class_list":["post-758848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-byline-date-only","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chronic-diseases","tag-health","tag-heart-lung-health","tag-homepage","tag-news","tag-research","tag-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}