Cover of the magazine issue overtop a detail of the illustration by Jay Bendt accompanying the Scientific American article.
CHILD microbiome research, which found that four major childhood allergies share a common bacterial origin, has been featured in a story in the US popular science magazine Scientific American.
The research, led by Study Co-Director Dr. Stuart Turvey, was published in Nature Communications in August 2023. It identified gut microbiome features and early-life influences associated with children developing allergies by age five. The researchers noted at the time that the findings could lead to methods of predicting if a child will develop allergies and to preventing those allergies from developing.
The March 2024 piece in Scientific American, written by Lydia Denworth, informs us that steps are already underway to develop a preventative probiotic treatment based on this finding: “Multiple clinical trials are underway to test allergy treatments with ‘cocktails’ of selected bacteria.”
Scientific American has featured contributions by over 150 Nobel Prize-winners and such scientists as Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla since its inception in 1845. It is the oldest continuously published magazine in the US.
This same CHILD publication was also selected by Nature Communications as one of its Top 25 Health Sciences Articles of 2023.
Original CHILD news | Key Discovery profile | Scientific American story
