Dirty Farm Air May Ward Off Asthma In Children

sciencehabit writes: For researchers trying to untangle the roots of the current epidemic of asthma, one observation is especially intriguing: Children who grow up on dairy farms are much less likely than the average child to develop the respiratory disease. Now, a European team studying mice has homed in on a possible explanation: Bits of bacteria found in farm dust trigger an inflammatory response in the animals' lungs that later protects them from asthma. An enzyme involved in this defense is sometimes disabled in people with asthma, suggesting that treatments inspired by this molecule could ward off the condition in people.

Comments

Re:Goin' to the farm

[Z00L00K]

I wouldn't call the farm air dirty, it's still cleaner than the city air we have.

The difference is that air on farms have a wider variety of bacteria (most of them harmless to humans with a working immune system), and asthma is an auto-immune disease caused by the immune system not being busy enough working on real threats and instead starts to react on all kinds of things that it shouldn't.