Environmental exposure, airway microbiome and respiratory health: You are what you breathe

Abstract

Our human respiratory system is constantly exposed to the stimuli of environmental toxicants, which is known to trigger a dysregulated lung immune response and lead to respiratory symptoms, impaired lung function and development of respiratory diseases. 1,2 Mounting evidence suggests the existence of a microbial community or microbiome, composing of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, in healthy human lungs, which plays an indispensable role in respiratory health and diseases. 3,4 Nevertheless, it remains unclear how the airway microbial ecosystem responds to environmental exposure and whether it is implicated in the exposure's effects on respiratory health. Through a population-based microbiome survey in Guangdong province, China, we have recently showed that the airway microbiome not only mediates the effects of environmental exposure on respiratory health, but also may impact an individual's susceptibility to exposure (Figure 1), thereby could be a promising new source of biomarkers and targets for environmental risk evaluation and prevention. 5 THE POPULATION-BASED AIRWAY MICROBIOME SURVEYDespite extensive studies on the airway microbiome in patients with respiratory diseases, characterization of the 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.