Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH
Researchers from the UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson found that the bacterial lysate OM-85 blocked exposure to environmental microbial products protected Amish farm children from asthma and allergies.
“Our innate immune system has evolved under environmental pressures like bacteria, but our current lifestyles often don’t give us the chance to develop this protective immunity,” Vercelli said. “Our idea is to use bacterial lysate to train our immune system to protect us from viruses, in the same way those who are regularly exposed to farm animals are protected against a multitude of bacteria and other microbes.”
According to Vercelli, treatment with bacterial lysates such as OM-85 could promote a more interactive exchange between the immune system and microbes.
Reference: “The OM-85 bacterial lysate inhibits SARS-CoV-2 infection of epithelial cells by downregulating SARS-CoV-2 receptor expression” by Vadim Pivniouk, PhD; Oksana Pivniouk, MA; Avery DeVries, PhD; Jennifer L. Uhrlaub, MS; Ashley Michael, BS; Denis Pivniouk, BS; Sydney R. VanLinden, BS; Michelle Y. Conway, BS; Seongmin Hahn, MS; Sean P. Malone; Peace Ezeh, PhD; Jared M. Churko, PhD; Dayna Anderson, BS; Monica Kraft, MD; Janko Nikolich-Zugich, MD, PhD and Donata Vercelli, MD, 9 December 2021, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jaci.2021.11.019
This research was supported in part by OM Pharma SA, and by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (T32ES007091), National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (T32 HL007249, R25HL126140), and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (P01AI148104, R21AI144722).
