In the United States, a large number of people are walking around with a lung condition without even knowing it.
This condition, known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), is a serious lung problem that makes it hard to breathe.
It’s often caused by smoking or being around a lot of air pollution and chemicals. What’s tricky about COPD is that many don’t realize they have it until it’s quite advanced.
Doctors who know a lot about lung health are saying we should check for COPD earlier in people who might get it, like those who have smoked or live in places with dirty air.
They’re also trying to figure out why some people get this lung problem while others don’t, even when they have the same risks.
A recent study has given us a new clue: it might have something to do with the tiny living things called microbes that live in our lungs.
The research showed that people who are at risk but have a wider variety of these lung microbes seem to have better lung health. They either don’t get COPD or it doesn’t get worse for them.
Dr. Yvonne Huang, a lung doctor and researcher, played a big part in this study. She explained that the microbes in our lungs aren’t just there by accident; they might actually affect our lung health.
This idea came from a big research project called SPIROMICS, which involved people from all over the country. The project’s goal was to better understand COPD and how it changes over time, since it usually takes many years to develop and is more common in people over 40.
For their research, Dr. Huang and her team looked at spit and mucus samples from 877 people. These people had been around a lot of tobacco smoke but either didn’t have COPD or had a mild case of it.
The team used a special kind of gene analysis to see what kinds of microbes were in the samples. They also did lung scans, clinical tests, and checked for signs of inflammation in the body.
One of the cool things about this study was that they could check on the patients for up to nine years to see how their lung health was doing.
Dr. Huang mentioned that they found certain microbes were linked to worse COPD, like some types of Streptococcus bacteria. But they also found good microbes, like Alloprevotella, Oribacterium, and Veillonella, that seemed to protect against COPD.
This study is just the beginning. The next steps involve figuring out exactly what these helpful microbes do and how they interact with our immune system to protect our lungs.
Also, the study suggests we should be careful about using antibiotics too much, since they can reduce the variety of microbes in our lungs. This variety seems to be important for keeping our lungs healthy, especially in the early stages of COPD.
So, this research is not just about understanding a disease better; it’s also about how tiny life forms living in us might be helping us more than we realized.
It opens up new ways to think about preventing and treating lung problems, showing just how complex and interconnected our health is with the microscopic world inside us.
If you care about lung health, please read studies about marijuana’s effects on lung health, and why some non-smokers get lung disease and some heavy smokers do not.
For more information about health, please see recent studies that olive oil may help you live longer, and vitamin D could help lower the risk of autoimmune diseases.
The research findings can be found in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
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