Publisher Health

The human body is constantly exposed to various environmental actors, from viruses to bacteria to fungi, but most of these microbial organisms provoke little or no response from our skin, which is charged with monitoring and protecting from external dangers.
Until now, researchers weren’t quite sure how that happened — and why our skin wasn’t constantly alarmed and inflamed.
In a study published May 21, 2021 in Science Immunology, scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine identify and describe two enzymes responsible for protecting our skin and body’s overall health from countless potential microbial intruders. These enzymes, called histone deacetylases (HDACs), inhibit the body’s inflammatory response in the skin.
“We have figured out why we tolerate certain microbes living on our skin, while the same bacteria would make us very sick if exposed elsewhere in the body,” said Richard Gallo, MD, PhD, Ima Gigli Distinguished Professor of Dermatology and chair of the Department of Dermatology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “In our research, we identified enzymes that act on the chromosome of specific skin cells that provide immune tolerance by the skin.
“Without these enzymes telling our cells to ignore certain bacteria, we’d have a constant rash on our skin.”
Gallo and colleagues say the potential mechanism for how the environment can interact and alter cell function is through epigenetic control of gene expression. Within the skin cells, proteins called toll-like receptors (TLRs) allow the cells to sense their surroundings and potential dangers.
In most organs, TLRs act as a warning system that triggers an inflammatory response to threats. But in skin cells, the two identified HDAC enzymes, HDAC8 and HDAC9, inhibit the inflammatory response.
“This is one of the first demonstrations of how the microbiome can interact with epigenetic factors in the skin and modulate the skin’s behavior through the inflammatory response,” said George Sen, PhD, associate professor of dermatology and cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “Whatever environment we’re facing can change a person’s specific response to it. Since this epigenetic change is reversible, unlike alterations to our DNA, we can potentially control our skin inflammatory response through targeting of these enzymes.”
The research was initially conducted in mouse models in which HDAC8 and HDAC9 had been genetically knocked out. As a result, the mice’s skin could not tolerate microbial or viral exposures, resulting in a heightened immune reaction. The team then reproduced the findings with human cells in a culture dish.
Gallo said the work could change how doctors treat certain types of skin inflammation or other dermatologic conditions.
“This is a completely new way to think about skin immune regulation,” said Gallo. “Through alterations in HDAC activity, we’ve provided a possible way to explore and quiet down unnecessary inflammation by working with skin cells themselves. In the future, drugs designed to turn these enzymes on or off could help treat skin disease as an alternative to antibiotics.”
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of California – San Diego. Original written by Jeanna Vazquez. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Several Covid-19 mitigation measures — including improving ventilation, requiring adults to wear face masks and conducting frequent surveillance testing — can help schools stay open and students remain safe, two new studies suggest.The studies, published on Friday, come as many school districts are drawing up their plans for the fall. They also follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance that all schools teaching students from kindergarten through grade 12 should continue to implement mask-wearing policies through the end of the 2020-2021 school year, after the agency’s recent move to allow for vaccinated people to forego masks indoors. The agency also kept in place its suggestions to observe physical distancing and to test for coronavirus infections.In one of the new studies, researchers from the C.D.C. and the Georgia Department of Public Health surveyed 169 elementary schools in Georgia that offered in-person learning last fall. The group asked the schools about their pandemic responses and collected data on the coronavirus cases detected between Nov. 16 and Dec. 11, before vaccines were in use in the United States.The researchers found that the incidence of the virus was 35 percent lower in schools that had improved their ventilation — by opening windows or doors, or using fans — than in schools that did not adopt these practices. In schools that combined better ventilation with air filtration — through the use of HEPA filters, for instance — case rates were 48 percent lower.Requiring all teachers and staff members to wear masks reduced the incidence of the virus by 37 percent, the researchers found. Schools that required students to wear masks had a 21-percent-lower incidence of the virus, but that reduction was not statistically significant, the scientists found. That may be a result of the fact that adults are more likely to transmit the virus than children are, or simply because of a small sample size.“Because universal and correct use of masks can reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission and is a relatively low-cost and easily implemented strategy, findings in this report suggest universal and correct mask use is an important Covid-19 prevention strategy in schools as part of a multicomponent approach,” the researchers write.A second study, led by researchers at the Utah Department of Health and the University of Utah, tracked the implementation of two coronavirus screening programs in the state’s schools. One program, implemented in January 2021, allowed schools with outbreaks to conduct schoolwide testing instead of shifting to remote learning.“Schools could either do what they had been doing in the fall, which was switch to remote for a two-week period to interrupt transmission chains, or it could test everyone,” said Dr. Adam Hersh, one of the study’s authors and an expert in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah. “And those who tested negative could return to in-person learning and those who tested positive obviously would be isolated.”A second testing program required students to be tested for the coronavirus every 14 days in order to participate in sports or other extracurricular activities. Both initiatives relied on rapid antigen tests, which are less sensitive, but cheaper and faster, than the standard P.C.R. tests. This year, between Jan. 4 and March 20, 28 high schools in the state reported sizable outbreaks. Fifteen schools decided to move to remote instruction for two weeks, while the other 13 decided to conduct surveillance testing instead. Of the 13,809 students who were tested as part of this screening, just 0.7 percent tested positive, the scientists reported. All 13 schools remained open.“From a public health standpoint, it’s a huge success,” said Kendra Babitz, the coronavirus testing coordinator at the Utah Department of Health and one of the study’s authors. “Testing is and should be a mitigation strategy that schools are using to prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the school setting,” she added, referring to the virus that causes Covid-19.Over the course of the winter, 95 percent of school athletic events took place as scheduled, the researchers found, although they did not compare that figure to a control group of schools without screening programs. “That’s in range with what happens in normal season,” Dr. Hersh said. “The show was able to go on.”

Families involved in the NHS blood infection scandal have reacted to statements made by the Health Secretary who was giving evidence to a public inquiry into the scandal.Matt Hancock said he acknowledged “the pain and suffering” caused to those involved and made reference to “a fair support scheme for the future”.At least 5,000 people in the UK were estimated to be infected by HIV and hepatitis C after receiving contaminated drugs from the NHS, imported from the US in the 1970s and 1980s.Su Gorman’s husband Steve Diamond was born with haemophilia and was given blood plasma products three times in his life, starting in 1976. He was later found to have contracted hepatitis C. Steve died in 2018 of multiple organ failure.An inquiry into how infected blood affected thousands of patients across the UK who received contaminated products is ongoing.In March, the UK government confirmed annual financial support payments for victims and their families.

A Harvard psychologist, he originally attributed personality traits to nurturing only. Then he concluded, We’re largely born this way.Prof. Jerome Kagan, a Harvard psychologist whose research into temperament found that shy infants often grow up to be anxious and fearful adults because of their biological nature as well as the way they were nurtured, died on May 10 in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 92.Jane Kagan, his daughter, said he had been visiting her for several months in North Carolina, where he had planned to relocate from his home in Belmont, Mass., outside Boston.Prof. Daniel Gilbert, another Harvard psychologist and author, described Professor Kagan in an email as “one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century.”“His research was not only original and groundbreaking,” he added, “but also prescient, foreshadowing the coming merger of psychology and biology in its attempt to link behavior to the brain.”Professor Kagan argued in more than two dozen books, including the widely praised “The Nature of the Child” (1984), that some children were genetically wired to worry and that they proved to be more resilient than expected as they passed from one stage of maturity to another. He also contended that the specifics of parenting were often not as crucial to a child’s future as parents think, although the child’s natural predisposition to be shy or exuberant could be altered by experience.His conclusions that some children may be born predisposed to a particular temperament may have come as some relief to the many parents of baby boomers who had rigidly followed the nurturing advice of Dr. Benjamin Spock but nonetheless raised a generation of rebellious teenagers in the 1960s.Professor Kagan’s 1984 book was recommended reading by The New York Times Book Review. A reviewer said it “lays siege to several commonly held assumptions about children and what makes them grow into happy and healthy adults.”Professor Kagan and his collaborators, including Howard A. Moss and Nancy C. Snidman, pioneered the reintroduction of physiology as a determinant of psychological characteristics that could be measured in the brain.They derived their conclusions from lengthy studies that started with the videotaped reactions of toddlers and infants as young as 4 months to various stimuli — unfamiliar objects, people and situations — and correlated those reactions to their temperament as teenagers and beyond, as measured in interviews.The wary ones who were subdued, shy and hovered around their mothers or who fussed, thrashed around and cried — about 15 percent of the total — tended to become anxious, inhibited adults. Another 15 percent who were ebullient as infants and embraced every new toy and interviewer tended to develop into fearless children and adolescents.Professor Kagan acknowledged that as an ideological liberal he had originally believed that all individuals were capable of achieving similar goals if afforded the same opportunities. “I was so resistant to awarding biology much influence,” he wrote.But he also concluded that properly run educational remedial programs were valuable because, except for the tiny number with acute brain damage, a vast majority of children, regardless of race or class, had the ability to master the intellectual skills that schools require as long as the students were instilled with confidence that they could succeed.Professor Kagan reassured women who worked outside the home that infants in day care barely differed from those who were home with their mothers, in terms of attachment, separation, cognitive functioning and language.His “The Nature of the Child” drew acclaim because, as the psychologist and writer Daniel Goleman wrote in The New York Times Book Review, Professor Kagan was “among those rare men of science who have also mastered the essayist’s art.”Jerome Kagan, a grandson of immigrants from Eastern Europe, was born on Feb. 25, 1929, in Newark to Joseph and Myrtle (Liebermann) Kagan, who ran a shoe store in Rahway, N.J.“My memory is that I was an anxious child” who stuttered during his first two years of elementary school, he recalled in an oral history interview in 1993 with the Society for Research in Child Development.In those days, parents and psychologists understood the source of many anxieties to be experiential. That proved intriguing to him.“During the 1940s and ’50s, many citizens and social scientists believed that the main, if not the only, cause of the problems that plague our species were childhood experiences,” he told The Harvard Gazette in 2010.“It followed,” he added, “that anyone who discovered the specific experiences that led to a mental illness, crime or school failure would be a hero doing God’s work. Who would not entertain the idea of becoming a child psychologist, given this zeitgeist?”He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and psychology from Rutgers University in 1950 and received a doctorate in psychology in 1954 from Yale, where he had been recruited to study by Prof. Frank A. Beach, a prominent psychologist.He taught briefly at Ohio State, was drafted into the Army and conducted research at the military hospital at West Point. He then joined the Fels Research Institute in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where his and Dr. Moss’s work resulted in a book on child development, “Birth to Maturity” (1962).He accepted an offer by Harvard to help establish its first human development program and was named a psychology professor there in 1964. He remained at Harvard, except for a year of fieldwork in Guatemala, until his retirement in 2005.In 1963, Professor Kagan was awarded the American Psychiatric Association’s Hofheimer Prize; in 1995, he received the American Psychological Association’s G. Stanley Hall Award.His other books include “The Growth of the Child: Reflections on Human Development” (1978), “Galen’s Prophecy: Temperament in Human Nature” (1994) and “A Trio of Pursuits: Puzzles in Human Development” (2021).In addition to his daughter, Jane, he is survived by a granddaughter and a great-grandson. His wife, Cele (Katzman) Kagan, whom he married in 1951, died in 2020.Whatever inhibitions Professor Kagan had as an anxious child with a stutter, he apparently outgrew them.“Every encounter with Jerry began with ‘I just learned something amazing!’ after which he would prove he had,” Professor Gilbert, of Harvard, said. “He grasped your hand and your shoulder and pulled you toward him, and he wouldn’t let go of either until you’d agreed that this new fact, idea or discovery was indeed the most fantastic thing you’d ever contemplated.“And then he’d say, ‘So what have you learned lately?’ and expect you to dazzle him in return.”

Campylobacter infection, one of the most common foodborne illnesses in the Western world, can also be spread through sexual contact, according to a new research discovery by an OU Hudson College of Public Health faculty member, working in conjunction with colleagues in Denmark.
The team’s research has been published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and is the first known study to prove this mode of transmission for Campylobacter. During a time when COVID-19 has dominated news about infectious diseases, the research is a reminder that many other pathogens affect lives around the world every day. The study was led by infectious disease epidemiologist Katrin Kuhn, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology in the OU Hudson College of Public Health.
“This research is important for public health messaging and for physicians as they talk to their patients about risks associated with sexual contact,” Kuhn said. “Although Campylobacter infection is usually not a serious disease, it causes diarrhea, which can result in people missing work, losing productivity or perhaps losing their job. It poses an additional risk for people with underlying health conditions.”
Campylobacter infections usually occur when people eat chicken that has not been cooked thoroughly or when juices from uncooked poultry make their way into other food. Infections can also be caused by drinking unpasteurized milk or water that has been contaminated by the feces of infected animals. However, those didn’t account for all cases of infection, Kuhn said, and she wondered if there was another route of transmission that remained unproven. An outbreak of Campylobacter infections in northern Europe among men who have sex with men prompted her to study that population of people in Denmark, where she was working when the research began.
The study results showed that the rate of Campylobacter infection was 14 times higher in men who have sex with men than the control subjects. Although the study focused on men who have sex with men, the results are relevant to people of any sexual orientation who engage in sexual behavior that may involve fecal-oral contact, Kuhn said.
Two other bacteria, Salmonella and Shigella, were used as comparisons in the study. Salmonella is spread primarily through infected foods, while Shigella can be transmitted through food or sexual contact. Salmonella has a high infectious dose, meaning people must ingest a significant amount of the bacteria before they become ill. However, Shigella and Campylobacter have low infectious doses, which makes transmission easier.
“That’s an additional reason why we believe Campylobacter can be transmitted through sexual contact like Shigella is — because people can become infected when only small amounts of the bacteria are present,” Kuhn said.
Campylobacter infections are probably more prevalent than the numbers show. For every one person who goes to the doctor and is diagnosed, epidemiologists estimate that 20 more people are infected, Kuhn said. Although treatment is usually required only for severe cases, complications can occur, especially in people who have compromised immune systems. In some cases, infection can result in reactive arthritis, in which the body’s immune system attacks itself, causing pain in the joints. Infection can also lead to Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a serious nerve disorder that can cause paralysis.
“This is an interesting time because COVID-19 has made people more aware of the importance of monitoring infectious diseases in general, not only during a pandemic,” she said. “There are many infections like the one caused by Campylobacter that make people sick. It’s important that we spotlight the fact that these diseases exist and that we continue to conduct research on their effects and modes of transmission.”
Before arriving at the OU Hudson College of Public Health, Kuhn served as a senior infectious disease epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institut in Denmark. Her work focused on food- and water-borne infections, and she was responsible for the national surveillance of Campylobacter and Shigella. She began this study while in Denmark and completed it after moving to Oklahoma. Statens Serum Institut is the Danish national institute for infectious diseases and the primary institute for surveillance of and research on infectious diseases in Denmark.
“A formal collaboration between OU Hudson College of Public Health and Statens Serum Institut will build a solid foundation for strengthening transatlantic research and, not least, improving the way that we monitor, understand and prevent infectious diseases in Oklahoma,” Kuhn said.

Chronic skin itching drives more people to the dermatologist than any other condition. In fact, the latest science literature finds that 7% of U.S. adults, and between 10 and 20% of people in developed countries, suffer from dermatitis, a common skin inflammatory condition that causes itching.
“Itch is a significant clinical problem, often caused by underlying medical conditions in the skin, liver, or kidney. Due to our limited understanding of itch mechanisms, we don’t have effective treatment for the majority of patients,” said Liang Han, an assistant professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Biological Sciences who is also a researcher in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.
Until recently, neuroscientists considered the mechanisms of skin itch the same. But Han and her research team recently uncovered differences in itch in non-hairy versus hairy areas of the skin, opening new areas for research.
Their research, published April 13 in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), could open new, more effective treatments for patients suffering from persistent skin itching.
Itch Origins More Than Skin Deep
According to researchers, there are two different types of stimuli from the nervous system that trigger the itch sensation through sensory nerves in the skin ? chemical and mechanical. In their study, Han and her team identified a specific neuron population that controls itching in ‘glabrous’ skin ?the smoother, tougher skin that’s found on the palms of hands and feet soles.

Depressive disorders are among the most frequent illnesses worldwide. The causes are complex and to date only partially understood. The trace element lithium appears to play a role. Using neutrons of the research neutron source at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), a research team has now proved that the distribution of lithium in the brains of depressive people is different from the distribution found in healthy humans.
Lithium is familiar to many of us from rechargeable batteries. Most people ingest lithium on a daily basis in drinking water. International studies have shown that a higher natural lithium content in drinking water coincides with a lower suicide rate among the population.
In much higher concentrations lithium salts have been used for decades to treat mania and depressive disturbances. However, the exact role lithium plays in the brain is still unknown.
Physicists and neuropathologists at the Technical University of Munich joined forensic medical experts at Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich (LMU) and an expert team from the Research Neutron Source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II) to develop a method which can be used to precisely determine the distribution of lithium in the human brain. The team hopes to be able to draw conclusions for therapy as well as to gain a better understanding of the physiological processes involved in depression.
Neutrons detect the slightest traces of lithium
The scientists investigated the brain of a suicidal patient and compared it with two control persons. The investigation focused on the ratio of the lithium concentration in white brain matter to the concentration in the gray matter of the brain.

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage copyrightGetty ImagesYoga can legally be taught in Alabama public schools, after the southern state overturned a nearly 30-year ban.The state’s department of education had barred yoga in 1993, citing its connection to Hinduism.The bill, brought for the third time by a Democrat, was approved by the state’s Republican legislature and governor.It limits yoga to stretches and poses, and prohibits non-English descriptions as well as “any aspect of Eastern philosophy and religious training”.Chanting is also not allowed. The use of the sound “om,” and the Sanskrit-based word “namaste” are also still banned.Democratic lawmaker Jeremy Gray, a former football player and certified yoga instructor, introduced the measure. He noted some of the language in the bill was “very offensive”, but necessary to appease conservatives.The law, signed by Governor Kay Ivey on Thursday, leaves it up to individual local school boards to decide whether to offer lessons. Parents will also be required to sign a permission slip saying that they acknowledge that yoga is associated with the Hindu religion.In order for the bill to pass the state’s Republican-majority Senate, the chamber introduced language stipulating that “school personnel may not use any techniques that involve hypnosis, the induction of a dissociative mental state, guided imagery, meditation, or any aspect of Eastern philosophy and religious training.”Mr Gray’s bill failed to pass twice before in previous legislative sessions, and was voted through on Thursday – the last day before lawmakers went on break.Does yoga have a conspiracy theory problem?Does doing yoga make you a Hindu?”A lot of the stuff you don’t do anyway. You don’t hypnotise people,” he told local news site AL.com.”Really, it just seemed very offensive,” Mr Gray said. “Had some phobia in it. A lot of it just didn’t really make sense.”The repeal faced criticism from Christian conservatives groups who argued that yoga should be considered a religious practice, which the US Constitution prohibits from promoting in government-run schools. They equated yoga with praying.Advocates, such as Mr Gray, say that simple stretches and breathing exercises throughout the day can help relieve stress and to improve mental health and concentration.Mr Gray added that he hopes to remove the unnecessary aspects of these amendments in future.

‘Don’t forget the mask’ — although most people nowadays follow this advice, professionals express different opinions about the effectiveness of face masks. An international team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, has now used observational data and model calculations to answer open questions. The study shows under which conditions and in which way masks actually reduce individual and population-average risks of being infected with COVID-19 and help mitigate the corona pandemic. In most environments and situations, even simple surgical masks effectively reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the effective reproduction number for COVID-19. In environments with potentially high airborne virus concentrations such as medical settings and densely occupied indoor spaces, however, masks with higher filtration efficiency (N95/FFP2) should be used and combined with other protective measures such as intensive ventilation.
Face masks are among the most simple, easy-to-use, and effective measure against the airborne transmission of infectious respiratory diseases, but their usefulness against COVID-19 is still under debate. Some earlier investigations found that masks were apparently not effective under certain conditions. Others found high efficacies, but a conclusive explanation for the apparent contradictions and inconsistencies had not been given.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC), the Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and the Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin together with partners from China and the USA used observational data and a novel quantitative model of airborne virus exposure to elucidate how the efficacy of face masks depends on characteristic regimes of airborne virus concentration.
In most situations, even simple surgical masks are effective
“For the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, we find that usually just a minor fraction of exhaled respiratory particles contains viruses. Most environments and contacts are under virus-limited conditions, where face masks, including simple surgical masks, have a high efficacy in preventing the spread of COVID-19,” explains Yafang Cheng, the head of a Minerva Research Group at the MPIC. “Our study provides a detailed and novel mechanistic understanding of population-average mask efficacy, which explains why regions with a higher percentage of the population wearing masks have better control of the pandemic.”
In virus-rich indoor environments with high infection probability, however, more advanced masks (N95/FFP2) and other protective equipment are required to prevent airborne transmission. The strong dependence of mask efficacy on airborne virus concentration highlights the importance of combining masks with other protective measures such as ventilation and distancing to keep the infection probability low.
“The combination of high-efficiency masks with other protective measures is particularly important for hospitals, medical centers, and other indoor environments, where high risk patients may encounter high virus concentrations,” says Christian Witt, head of the Research Area Pneumology at the Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin. “Masks will remain an important protective measure against SARS-Cov-2 infection — even for vaccinated persons, especially when the protection provided by vaccination decreases over time.”
The approach can be used to assess protection against more infectious mutants
“Our approach and results of relating the effectiveness of protective measures to the infection probability and basic reproduction number are applicable to a wide range of respiratory viruses and diseases, including coronaviruses, rhinoviruses, and influenza. They can also be used to assess the efficacy of masks and other preventive measures against new and more infectious mutants of SARS-CoV-2.” says Hang Su, research group leader at the MPIC. “Our investigations also show that aerosol transmission does not necessarily lead to very high reproduction numbers as observed for measles, and that relatively low reproduction numbers do not rule out airborne transmission.”
Moreover, the study demonstrates how important high compliance and correct use of masks are to ensure their effectiveness in reducing the reproduction number of COVID-19. To reduce the reproduction number from ~3 as originally observed to below 1, at least 60-70% compliance would be required for surgical masks (~40% for N95/FFP2 masks). Higher rates of compliance would be required for more infectious variants of SARS-CoV-2, which re-emphasizes that masks should be combined with other protective measures like ventilation and distancing for efficient reduction of infection probabilities and reproduction numbers.
“Our study explains quantitatively why and how face masks are highly effective in virus-limited environments and less effective in virus-rich environments — both at the individual and the population average level related to observed infection rates and effective reproduction numbers. This has not been achieved before and is essential to overcome inconclusive earlier results, arguments, and discussions. We are confident, that the mechanistic insights and quantitative results gained in our study constitute a scientific breakthrough that will help to settle the ongoing debate about the usefulness of masks and promote efficient mitigation of the COVID pandemic,” summarizes Ulrich Pöschl, director of the MPIC Multiphase Chemistry Department.

Women who were highly exposed to ultra-fine particles in air pollution during their pregnancy were more likely to have children who developed asthma, according to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in May. This is the first time asthma has been linked with prenatal exposure to this type of air pollution, which is named for its tiny size and which is not regulated or routinely monitored in the United States.
Slightly more than 18 percent of the children born to these mothers developed asthma in their preschool years, compared to 7 percent of children overall in the United States identified as having asthma by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Other types of pollutants are routinely monitored and regulated to reduce potential health effects, such as larger-size particulate pollution and gaseous pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. These have been associated with asthma risk in children in prior research. This study controlled for exposure to these other types of pollution and exposure to pollutants following birth, and it still found an elevated risk of asthma in children born to mothers with heightened exposure to ultra-fine particles in pregnancy.
Ultra-fine particulate pollution — particles that are smaller than the width of an average human hair — can get deeper into our lungs and pass into our circulation to cause various health effects. Because of this, the researchers said their toxic effects may actually be greater.
“One reason ultra-fine particulates are not routinely monitored is that there have been a number of unique challenges to measuring them accurately. Fortunately, recent methods have been developed to provide such exposure data which allowed us to conduct this study,” said lead author Rosalind Wright, MD, MPH, Horace W. Goldsmith Professor in Children’s Health Research, Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health and Co-director of the Institute for Exposomic Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
This study included 376 mothers and their children, most of them Black or Latinx, who live in the Boston metropolitan area and were already being followed to assess their health. Mount Sinai researchers partnered with a group of scientists at Tufts University in the Boston area who had developed a way to provide valid daily estimations of ultra-fine particulate exposure which could be linked to the area of the mothers’ and children’s homes. Many of these women were more likely to live near major roadways with higher traffic density where exposure to these tiny particles tends to be higher.
The researchers followed up with the mothers to find out whether the children were diagnosed with asthma. Most of the diagnoses of asthma occurred just after three years of age.
Pollution’s effect in utero can alter lung development and respiratory health. This can lead to pediatric disorders like asthma. How this happens is not completely understood but pollution can alter certain bodily regulatory systems like neuroendocrine and immune function that have been linked with asthma in other studies.
While both boys and girls were affected by prenatal ultrafine particle exposure, this study found that girl babies were more sensitive to ultra-fine particle pollution’s effects on asthma risk when exposed in late pregnancy. The reason for this phenomenon is also unclear, but studies show it is possibly due to endocrine-disrupting effects of the pollution exposure.
“This research is an important early step in building the evidence base that can lead to better monitoring of exposure to ultrafine particles in the United States and ultimately to regulation. As we advance methods for measuring these tiny particles, we hope for replication of these findings, both within different geographic areas across the United States as well as globally. Childhood asthma remains a global epidemic that is likely to grow with the anticipated rise in particulate air pollution exposures due to effects of climate change,” Dr. Wright said.