According to investigators of a study published in Environmental Research, “lower fungal diversity was associated with asthma symptoms in this [New York City, NY] urban setting.”
While the exact causes of asthma are multifactorial, environmental factors play a significant role in its development and severity. Recent research has shed light on the potential link between fungal diversity in the indoor environment and the prevalence of asthma. The investigators aimed to test their hypothesis that “fungal diversity is inversely associated with neighborhood asthma prevalence and identify specific fungal species associated with asthma morbidity.”
An asthma case-control study enrolled 347 children, aged 7 to 8 years old, living in New York City neighborhoods characterized by varying asthma prevalence rates, ranging from 11% to 18% in higher-prevalence neighborhoods and 3% to 9% in lower-prevalence neighborhoods. Fungal communities were assessed in the floor dust of these households using high-throughput DNA sequencing techniques. A subset of asthmatic children (n=140) was followed until age 10 to 11 to determine asthma persistence.
The study demonstrated that neighborhood asthma prevalence was inversely associated with fungal species richness, indicating that areas with greater fungal diversity tended to have lower asthma prevalence.
Additionally, the Shannon diversity index, a measure of species diversity, exhibited a marginal inverse association with asthma prevalence in the neighborhoods studied. The associations between neighborhood asthma prevalence and diversity indices were influenced by factors such as building type and the presence of bedroom carpeting.
In the subset of children with asthma at the age of 7 to 8, Shannon fungal diversity was found to be inversely associated with the frequency of asthma symptoms, suggesting that children living in neighborhoods with lower fungal diversity were more likely to experience frequent asthma symptoms. Furthermore, this reduced diversity was also associated with asthma persistence from ages 7 to 8 to 10 to 11, indicating that the influence of fungal diversity extended beyond the initial development of asthma.
When analyzing individual fungal species, however, the investigators did not find any significant associations with asthma outcomes, even after accounting for false discovery rates.
“Further research is warranted into building type, carpeting, and other environmental characteristics [that] influence fungal exposures in homes,” the investigators concluded.
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