UNBORN babies infected in the womb by a common sexually transmitted bacterium
are more likely to develop asthma in later life. About 50 per cent of Western
women carry the bacterium.
Rita DeLollis of the Winchester and Lawrence Hospital in Medford,
Massachusetts, screened the blood of 132 wheezing children, three years old or
younger, for Ureaplasma urealyticum. Nearly a third carried the
bacterium. But in 46 children with normal breathing, only 4 per cent were
infected, DeLollis told the American Society for Microbiology鈥檚 37th
Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, held in
Toronto last week.
U. urealyticum infects both men and women. It can cause nonspecific
urethritis, and can also be passed from pregnant women to their
babies鈥攁lthough microbiologists are not sure whether this happens in the
womb or during childbirth.
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DeLollis believes the bacterium may be a significant cause of childhood
asthma, which is on the increase throughout the developed world. In some
countries as many as one child in eight is affected. 鈥淭hese data suggest the
detection and treatment of U. urealyticum in mothers and fathers before
pregnancy should be routine,鈥� says DeLollis.
She says that U. urealyticum infection in infants, which usually
shows no obvious symptoms, can be treated quite easily. Although the bacterium
is largely resistant to the standard antibiotic erythromycin, it clears up
rapidly if treated with the newer drug clarithromycin. If the infection is
detected and treated in the first 12 months of life, a baby is no more likely to
show signs of asthma than an uninfected child, DeLollis has found.
Other asthma researchers have suggested that a variety of chronic infections
help to trigger the disease by subtly altering normal immune responses. 鈥淐learly
infections play an important role in asthma,鈥� says Peter Openshaw, an
immunologist at Imperial College, London. 鈥淎nd we鈥檙e only just scratching the
蝉耻谤蹿补肠别.鈥�
However, Lesley Regano of St Mary鈥檚 Hospital in London, who is investigating
a possible link between U. urealyticum and miscarriage, believes it is
too early to call for routine testing for U. urealyticumin pregnant
women. One problem is that women often become reinfected after
treatment with antibiotics, presumably through sex with infected partners.