Asthma and lower airway diseaseIndoor microbial communities: Influence on asthma severity in atopic and nonatopic children
Section snippets
Study population
The current analysis was designed to select participants of the parent study at the extremes of asthma severity stratified by atopic status while controlling for socioeconomic status, asthma medication use, and sampling season. Subjects for the present analysis (n = 200) were selected from participants in a study of air quality and respiratory health.14, 15 Between 2006 and 2009, children with asthma and their families were recruited from Connecticut and southwestern Massachusetts.14, 15
Results
Demographic information for the participants is shown in Table II. By using χ2 analysis, distributions were representative for the variables age, race, sex, mother's education level, or smoking in the home between subjects in the 4 atopy/asthma severity categories (P > .05). Compared with the parent study cohort, sex distribution was representative (P = .47), although the current study group is less white (P < .0001) and the mother's education level is lower (P = .004).
Sequencing results have
Discussion
Our results suggest that asthma severity in children is associated with microbial exposures. The observed response might be different in atopic compared with nonatopic children, which deserves further study. Among all children, associations were found with both fungal and bacterial variables (Fig 1, A, and Table III). Asthma severity in atopic children was associated with fungal community composition (Fig 2). There was also a trend toward increased asthma severity with exposure to summed
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Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Microbiology of the Build Environment) and a grant from the National Institutes of Health (ES05410).
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: B. P. Leaderer receives research support from National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences ES05410. J. Peccia receives research support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The rest of the authors declare that they have no relevant conflicts of interest.