Dirty diapers are the unlikeliest of crystal balls, but they could hold the answer to why some children develop asthma. Just four types of gut bacteria in the stool seem to make all the difference, predicting who will get the disease and who won’t, researchers say. The finding could help identify children at high risk of asthma, and it could also lead to the development of probiotic mixtures that prevent the disease.
The new study “puts a lot of epidemiological observations from over the years into a new perspective,” says asthma researcher Marsha Wills-Karp of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, who was not involved in the latest work.
A growing body of research has led to a new appreciation over the last decade for how the microbiome—the collection of bacteria and viruses that live in the human body—shapes people’s health. And studies have hinted that differences between young babies’ microbiomes, caused by birth methods, diet, environment, and antibiotic exposure, might affect their chances of developing diseases such as asthma and allergies.