Rolle der mikrobiellen Darm-Lungen-Achse für die Lungengesundheit

The human microbiome is represented by a variety of microorganisms including bacteria, archaea, viruses and fungi that live on and inside our body. Most of them do not cause disease. In fact, microbes provide many important functions that humans did not develop themselves. They can digest food and supply host cells with nutrients, metabolize drugs, and activate and support the host’s immune system. Knowledge about the microbiome has expanded with the development of novel culture-independent techniques, which revealed that healthy lungs also harbor diverse microbial communities and that variations in their composition can correlate with severity of lung diseases. Limited experimental evidence suggests an influence of the gut microbiome on respiratory health, involving different communication pathways, such as through the release of gut microbial metabolites, or via induced host metabolites or gut-lung immune cell trade. This implies that nutrition, by shaping the gut microbiome, could have an impact on respiratory diseases. However, this requires a precise mechanistic understanding how the gut microbiome affects microbial communities in the lungs and vice versa. Once better understood, this mechanism could be of particular interest in the future for the application of nutritive strategies in critical time window during the early childhood to improve lung health.