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MICROBIOME

Country-living in the city

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 17, pages 462–463 (2019)Cite this article

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Asthma is the most common chronic disease in children and multiple factors have been indicated in the development of asthma, including environmental and host factors. Whereas populations in rural areas have a low risk of asthma, populations in urban environments have a high risk. Indeed, urbanization has been linked to the increased risk of developing asthma and previous studies have suggested that exposure to farms with animals, in particular increased environmental microbial burden and exposure to farm-associated microbial communities in house dust, seems to protect children from childhood asthma. Despite the increasing available evidence of an asthma-protective effect of farm-like indoor dust microbiota, whether similar communities in urban environments have a protective effect was unclear. In this study, Kirjavainen et al. show that the microbiota associated with farm houses also has a protective effect in non-farm houses as the risk of developing asthma decreases.

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  • Gilbert, J. A. & Stephens, B. Microbiology of the built environment. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 16, 661–670 (2018)

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  1. Nature Reviews Microbiology http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/

    Andrea Du Toit

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  1. Andrea Du Toit
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Correspondence to Andrea Du Toit.

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Du Toit, A. Country-living in the city. Nat Rev Microbiol 17, 462–463 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-019-0234-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-019-0234-1

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