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Science Quickly

Early-Life Microbes Ward Off Asthma

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.41.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2017

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Exposure to specific microbes when an infant is less than a year old seems to have a protective effect against the child's eventual acquisition of asthma.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, Deadpool here. We're very excited to be joining you, but we should set the table correctly.

0:05.4

We're mostly going to make enemies with Disney and make a lot of jokes at Hughes' expense.

0:09.4

Come again.

0:10.4

So sit back, relax, while we travel to a place where grown men and women walk around in tights and act like it's not a giant cultural cry for help.

0:19.0

Because this is cinema. Shaggy! Oh my God! This is Cinema Cinema.

0:23.0

Cinema. Shut God.

0:24.0

Oh my God.

0:25.0

Marvel Studios Deadpool in Wolverine in Cinemas Thursday, July 25th.

0:30.0

This is Scientific Americans, 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

0:37.0

As you know, asthma is a very prevalent disease in our society now. It wasn't so 50 years ago.

0:42.0

And we now realize that the very early life microbes

0:45.7

seem to have set you up or not for asthma. Microbiologist Brett Finley from

0:50.6

the University of British Columbia.

0:53.0

In a study of Canadian infants, his team found...

0:55.0

At three months of age, which is a really tiny little kid,

0:58.0

there were four microbes that if you had these four microbes,

1:01.0

you had very, very low risk of getting asthma.

1:03.4

If you didn't have these microbes, you were very, very high risk of asthma.

1:07.3

Finley spoke February 17th at the annual meeting of the American Association for

1:11.6

the Advancement of Science in Boston, where he also discussed

1:15.2

a recent follow-up study among kids in rural Ecuador.

1:19.4

And a big risk factor associated with asthma was where they had potable clean water.

...

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