A team of B.C.-based researchers has received a $2-million grant to look at the connection between a child’s upbringing and environment and the development of asthma.
Childhood asthma is on the rise, but researchers are still learning what causes it and why it develops in some children and not others, said Dr. Stuart Turvey, the lead investigator on the project and a professor at the University of B.C.’s faculty of medicine.
Traffic-related air pollution, green space in cities, gut bacteria, breastfeeding, community and family social environments are just some of the factors Turvey and his team will be considering.
“This research will help us learn about the changes that we can make to a child’s environment to reduce their susceptibility to the disease,” Turvey said in a news release.
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Genome British Columbia are funding the work, which is a collaboration between UBC, the B.C. Children’s Hospital, the Provincial Health Services Authority, and the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development Study.
Turvey recently co-authored a study that identified four strains of bacteria babies may need in their digestive tract to prevent asthma. The researchers found the bacterial strains Faecalibacterium, Lachnospira, Veillonella and Rothia were lacking in fecal samples from three-month old babies who tested positive for a predisposition to the disease.
More than 285,000 British Columbians had asthma as of 2014, according to Statistics Canada.
mrobinson@postmedia.com
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