Clinical significance of respiratory and intestinal microbiota on respiratory health in children / 中华微生物学和免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

Human respiratory tract is colonized with microbial communities. In recent years, high-throughput DNA sequencing technology has subverted the traditional understanding of pulmonary sterility by proving that there are bacteria in the lungs. As research progresses, it is discovered that there is a connection between the gut and respiratory microbiota, known as the " gut-lung axis" . The gut microbiota can influence lung immunity, and lung inflammation can affect the gut microbiota and cause disease. An in-depth understanding of the " gut-lung axis" has given us a deeper understanding of mucosal immunity. The respiratory microbiota may play an important role in the structural maturation of the host airway, the formation of local immunity and the development of the system, and also has an important impact on the occurrence and development of respiratory diseases in children. In recent years, many achievements have been made in microbiological research around respiratory diseases. Attempts to apply microbe-directed therapies (including probiotics, prebiotics and antibiotics and even vaccines) to restore the healthy homeostasis of the respiratory microbiota in diseased states may be an important target for the prevention and treatment of respiratory diseases in the future. The assumption of applying " omics" such as metagenomics, metabolomics, metatranscriptomics and metaproteomics for experimental research may help to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of the respiratory microbiota on respiratory health and disease, and to better understand the function of the respiratory microbiota and causality. Actively searching for novel probiotics or microbiota with anti-inflammatory properties will be a potential candidate approach for improving airway inflammation in the future; further discovery of novel metabolites with immunomodulatory potential as well as the metabolites of purified microorganisms (such as short-chain fatty acids) will provide promising candidates for the treatment of respiratory diseases. This article summarized the progress in this field in recent years.