The intestinal microbiota shapes the nature of the host immune system, and imbalances in the composition of the microbiota have been associated with both intestinal and extra-intestinal disease. Kim etal. now show that the treatment of mice with antibiotics can promote allergic airway inflammation by leading to the overgrowth of commensal fungi in the gut. Several studies have shown how commensal bacteria can influence systemic immune responses, but the effects of other commensal microorganisms are poorly understood. The authors treated mice with antibiotics to induce dysbiosis and found that this increased the susceptibility of the animals to allergic airway inflammation induced by papain or house dust mite extract.
展开▼
