Dietary fibre in gut may help with skin allergies: Monash study

by Anne Crawford

A Monash University study exploring the emerging gut-skin axis has found that microbial fermentation of dietary fibre in the gut can protect against allergic skin disease. The research could potentially lead to novel treatments to prevent or treat allergies.

Professor Ben Marsland from the Central Clinical School’s Department of Immunology, together with Swiss colleagues at the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV), showed that the fermentation of fibre in the gut by bacteria and subsequent production of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), in particular butyrate, protected against atopic dermatitis in mice.

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Microbiome key to skin's immunological landscape

Why babies develop eczema is not yet well understood. Professor Ben
Marsland is senior author on a new paper on the skin's microbiome.
Image: Shutterstock

Monash immunologists have published a study following up on their earlier research, published in The Lancet, on whether atopic dermatitis in the first year of life could be reduced by applying skin emollients during infancy. The answer to that was No, as it turned out.

The group continued on with their more fundamental research on atopic dermatitis to try and understand the rules which govern the skin and determine whether they could identify factors that might be the focus of future intervention studies.

In their recent paper, they show in a mouse model that the microbiome - the family of all the microbes that live on and inside the human body - is a key determinant of the immunological landscape of the skin.

Heady days: Review charts growth of lung microbiome research

Professor Ben Marsland

by Anne Crawford

In 2010 scientists reported for the first time that microbiota – the community of microorganisms that includes bacteria – existed in the airways of humans; they were met with disbelief: the healthy lung was thought to be sterile.
 
Around the same time, Professor Ben Marsland and colleagues conducted a study demonstrating that administration of innocuous bacteria to the lungs of mice protected them against asthma. A further study together with Professor Nicola Harris showed that ‘germ-free’ mice, which are bred under sterile conditions and have no microbiota, exhibited increased susceptibility to asthma.

Spotlight on our NHMRC Fellowship winners: Professor Ben Marsland

Professor Ben Marsland
Deparment of Immnuology 
and Pathology

by Anne Crawford

Professor Ben Marsland. Senior Research Fellow B (SFRB) for: a project exploring how the microbiome can be used to prevent and treat respiratory diseases.  

Until recently the healthy human lung was, remarkably, thought to be ‘sterile’. In 2010, it was discovered that our airways, like our gut, have a microbiome, a suite of microorganisms including bacteria, fungi and viruses performing a vast array of functions. Since then the field has exploded, with hundreds of papers exploring the topic.