Association between nasal and nasopharyngeal bacterial colonization in early life and eczema phenotypes

Abstract

Background: An association has been reported between early life Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage and higher risk of childhood eczema, but it is unclear whether this relationship is causal and associations with other bacterial species are unclear.Objective: To examine the associations of early life nasal and nasopharyngeal bacterial carriage with eczema phenotypes, and the direction of any associations identified. Methods: Among 996 subjects of a population-based prospective cohort study, nasal swabs for Staphylococcus aureus, and nasopharyngeal swabs for Streptococcus pneumoniae, Moraxella catarrhalis and Haemophilus influenzae were collected and cultured from age 6 weeks to 6 years. Never, early, mid-, late transient and persistent eczema phenotypes were identified from parental-reported physician-diagnosed eczema from age 6 months until 10 years. Multinomial regression models and cross-lagged models were applied. Results: Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage at 6 months was associated with an increased risk of early transient and persistent eczema (OR (95% CI): 2.69 (1.34, 5.39) and 4.17 (1.12, 15.51)). The associations between Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriage and eczema were mostly cross-sectional, and not longitudinal. No associations of Staphylococcus pneumoniae, Moraxella catarrhalis and Haemophilus influenza nasopharyngeal bacterial carriage with eczema and eczema phenotypes were observed (OR range (95% CI): 0.71 (0.35, 1.44) to 1.77 (0.84, 3.73)).This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

What does it mean to be food allergic?

“…In this issue, Hu et al use the Generation R cohort study to investigate associations between nasal and nasopharyngeal bacterial colonization and eczema phenotypes. 9 They used latent class growth analysis to identify eczema phenotypes within their cohort and found the association between S. aureus colonization and eczema was more specific than previously documented, being present at six months but not other time points, and for the early transient and the persistent eczema phenotypes, but not the mid-transient or late-transient phenotypes.…”