Investigation of the association between chlamydial infection and asthma in different age groups

哮喘是一种常见的严重肺部疾病，由过敏引起的炎症引起，症状包括呼吸困难、喘息、胸闷和咳嗽。哮喘的临床特征是免疫系统出现某些类型的反应。我们正在寻找预防和治疗哮喘的方法。众所周知，某些被称为衣原体的细菌与哮喘之间存在联系，但尚不清楚人们是先患哮喘，然后感染衣原体，还是先被感染，然后导致哮喘。我们已经证明，如果成年老鼠在衣原体感染期间暴露于过敏原，那么哮喘会变得更糟。然而，如果新生小鼠有衣原体感染，那么当它们成年时哮喘就会被预防。这些都是初步的观察结果，我们需要扩大和了解导致感染和过敏的免疫机制，以便我们可以针对它们使用抗生素或疫苗。我们将研究衣原体感染的时间相对于暴露于过敏原（之前，期间或之后）如何影响成年小鼠哮喘的发展。新生儿和幼儿的免疫系统与成人不同，因此我们将研究幼鼠感染对以后的感染和过敏有什么影响。我们还将测试我们开发的一种针对衣原体感染的新疫苗，看看它是否能预防衣原体感染和感染引起的哮喘。然后，我们将检查是否存在衣原体感染和哮喘的人类哮喘患者的哮喘与他们的哮喘恶化到医院的相同的关联。这项工作将帮助我们制定预防和治疗哮喘的新策略，这在不同的年龄组可能有所不同。我们将确定通过疫苗接种（或抗生素）预防衣原体感染是否可用于预防和治疗哮喘。

Asthma is a common and severe lung disease that results from inflammation due to allergy and has symptoms of breathing difficulties, wheezing, chest tightness, and cough. Asthma is clinically characterised by the presence of certain types of responses from the immune system. We are looking for ways of preventing and curing asthma. There is a well known link between certain types of bacteria, called Chlamydia, and asthma but it is not known whether people develop asthma first and then get chlamydial infection or are infected first and this leads to asthma. We have shown that if adult mice are exposed to an allergen during chlamydial infection then the asthma gets worse. However, if newborn mice have a chlamydial infection then asthma is prevented when they are adults. These are preliminary observations, which we need to expand and understand the immune mechanisms that result in infection and allergy so that we can target them with antibiotics or vaccines. We will investigate how the timing of chlamydial infection relative to exposure to allergens (before, during or after) affects the development of asthma in adult mice. Newborns and young children have different immune systems to adults, so we will investigate what effects the infection of young mice has on infection and allergy later in life. We will also test a new vaccine we have developed against chlamydial infection to see if it can prevent chlamydial infection and infection-induced asthma. We will then examine if there is the same association between chlamydial infection and asthma in human asthmatics that present to hospital with exacerbation of their asthma. This work will help us develop new strategies for preventing and curing asthma, which may vary in different age groups. We will identify whether prevention of chlamydial infection by vaccination (or antibiotics) can be used to prevent and treat asthma.