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The gut microbiota is influenced by environmental factors such as food. Maternal diet during pregnancy modifies the gut microbiota composition and function, leading to the production of specific compounds that are transferred to the fetus and enhance the ontogeny and maturation of the immune system. Prebiotics are fermented by gut bacteria, leading to the release of short-chain fatty acids that can specifically interact with the immune system, inducing a switch toward tolerogenic populations and therefore conferring health benefits.
Incomplete maturation of immune regulatory functions at birth is antecedent to the heightened risk for severe respiratory infections during infancy. Our forerunner animal model studies demonstrated that maternal treatment with the microbial-derived immune training agent OM-85 during pregnancy promotes accelerated postnatal maturation of mechanisms that regulate inflammatory processes in the offspring airways.
There is now considerable evidence demonstrating that both prenatal and postnatal exposure to particular classes of microbial stimuli can provide beneficial signals during early life immune development, resulting in the protection against future inflammatory disease.
Brown adipose tissue (BAT) may be an important metabolic regulator of whole-body glucose. While important roles have been ascribed to macrophages in regulating metabolic functions in BAT, little is known of the roles of other immune cells subsets, particularly dendritic cells (DCs). Eating a high-fat diet may compromise the development of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs)-which give rise to DCs-in bone marrow, with less known of its effects in BAT. We have previously demonstrated that ongoing exposure to low-dose ultraviolet radiation (UVR) significantly reduced the 'whitening' effect of eating a high-fat diet upon interscapular (i) BAT of mice.
We recently reported that offspring of mice treated during pregnancy with the microbial-derived immunomodulator OM-85 manifest striking resistance to allergic airways inflammation, and localized the potential treatment target to fetal conventional dendritic cell (cDC) progenitors. Here, we profile maternal OM-85 treatment-associated transcriptomic signatures in fetal bone marrow, and identify a series of immunometabolic pathways which provide essential metabolites for accelerated myelopoiesis.
The bone marrow is a specialised niche responsible for the maintenance of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells during homeostasis and inflammation. Recent studies however have extended this essential role to the extramedullary and extravascular lung microenvironment. Here, we provide further evidence for a reservoir of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells within the lung from embryonic day 18.5 until adulthood.
Treatment options for viral lung infections are currently limited. We aimed to explore the safety and efficacy of inhaled ethanol in an influenza-infection mouse model.
Asthma exacerbations in children are associated with respiratory viral infection and atopy, resulting in systemic immune activation and infiltration of immune cells into the airways. The gene networks driving the immune activation and subsequent migration of immune cells into the airways remains incompletely understood. Cellular and molecular profiling of PBMC was employed on paired samples obtained from atopic asthmatic children during acute virus-associated exacerbations and later during convalescence.
Neutrophils are the most abundant immune cell in circulation. However, due to a number of technical challenges for researchers, including the neutrophil's short lifespan and difficulties with preservation, they are often discarded during blood processing and thus ignored in cohort studies. As such, the contribution of neutrophils to disease and their involvement in disease mechanisms is less explored compared with other immune cell types.
Remission is the desired outcome following OIT as it allows individuals to discontinue treatment and eat the allergen freely. Early initiation of OIT in infants and toddlers has been embraced as an approach to increase the likelihood of remission. However, there is no high-quality evidence supporting younger age as an independent factor driving remission; available studies are limited by small samples of younger subjects and lack of adjustment for confounding covariates, particularly peanut-specific IgE (sIgE) levels which is closely cor