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Development of Allergic Airway Disease in Mice following Antibiotic Therapy and Fungal Microbiota Increase: Role of Host Genetics, Antigen, and Interleukin-13

Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine,¹ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan,³ Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom²

Received 21 June 2004/ Returned for modification 23 July 2004/ Accepted 10 September 2004

Lending support to the hygiene hypothesis, epidemiological studies have demonstrated that allergic disease correlates with widespread use of antibiotics and alterations in fecal microbiota ("microflora"). Antibiotics also lead to overgrowth of the yeast Candida albicans, which can secrete potent prostaglandin-like immune response modulators, from the microbiota. We have recently developed a mouse model of antibiotic-induced gastrointestinal microbiota disruption that is characterized by stable increases in levels of gastrointestinal enteric bacteria and Candida. Using this model, we have previously demonstrated that microbiota disruption can drive the development of a CD4 T-cell-mediated airway allergic response to mold spore challenge in immunocompetent C57BL/6 mice without previous systemic antigen priming. The studies presented here address important questions concerning the universality of the model. To investigate the role of host genetics, we tested BALB/c mice. As with C57BL/6 mice, microbiota disruption promoted the development of an allergic response in the lungs of BALB/c mice upon subsequent challenge with mold spores. In addition, this allergic response required interleukin-13 (IL-13) (the response was absent in IL-13^–/– mice). To investigate the role of antigen, we subjected mice with disrupted microbiota to intranasal challenge with ovalbumin (OVA). In the absence of systemic priming, only mice with altered microbiota developed airway allergic responses to OVA. The studies presented here demonstrate that the effects of microbiota disruption are largely independent of host genetics and the nature of the antigen and that IL-13 is required for the airway allergic response that follows microbiota disruption.

Editor: T. R. Kozel

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