New strategies for allergy prevention based on the metabolic fingerprint in the blood

Research Project, 2019 – 2021

Allergy is the most common chronic disease among children and adolescents in Sweden and other Western countries. There are currently no effective methods to prevent allergy development. A focused research approach is needed to slow down this epidemic that affects a large part of the population with lifelong problems, high drug costs and production losses as a result.

This project aims to identify metabolic biomarkers in the blood that predict allergy risk to find new strategies for allergy prevention. The development of the immune system occurs early in life, starting already during the fetal stage. The project therefore focuses on pregnant mothers and their newborn babies. In a pioneering study in rats, it was recently shown that metabolites from the mother's diet and microbiota circulate into the fetal blood during the fetal stage and affect the fetal immune system. This has yet to be tested in humans, which we will do in this project.

Our research team combines nutrition, metabolomics, microbiology, immunology and pediatric allergy expertise. Our access to a unique mother-child cohort (mothers/children followed from birth onwards) and an advanced metabolomics laboratory allows us to study the effect of metabolites from maternal diet and maternal microflora on immunological maturation and allergy development.

The goal is to develop biomarkers of allergy development in the blood of newborns to predict disease and develop effective allergy prevention interventions.