Naturally occurring bacteria in your microbiome could help reduce your allergies to peanuts

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-03-04 03:00

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Two types of bacteria - named Rothia and Staphylococcus - that naturally live in our mouths and intestines have the ability to break down the allergy-causing proteins in peanuts before our immune systems have time to overreact, say international researchers. The team say mice that were allergic to peanuts were given a hefty dose of Rothia and subsequently had a greatly reduced level of anaphylaxis - a severe and quick allergic reaction that can cause airways to swell and difficulty in breathing - when exposed to peanuts. Additionally, in human patients with a peanut allergy, they found those with these common bacteria were able to better tolerate exposure to peanuts than their bacteria-free peers. The team believes these gut-bugs might be viable for future allergy-reducing medicines or probiotics.

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Journal/
conference: Cell Host & Microbe

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain

Funder: This work was supported by grants from The Nutricia Research Foundation (NRF-2021-13) and the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRFE-2019-00083), to R.J.-S. and A.C., and by a grant from the European Food Safety Authority (GP/EFSA/ENCO/2020/02-1) to F.J.M. R.J.-S.’s laboratory is also supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII; CP20/ 00043, PI22/00236, PI25/00477, and RD24/0007/0037), by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacio´ n y Universidades (CNS2024-154194), and by the Community of Madrid (IND2024/BMD-33910). A.C. holds a Family Douglas Research Chair in Intestinal Research and is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR; project grant 202010PJT), NSERC (DGECR-2022-00221), and Crohn’s and Colitis Canada (CCC, Grants-In-Aid grant). L.E.R. is supported by a Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral award from CIHR and a graduate scholarship from the Farncombe Institute. E.S.-M. is supported by a Formacio´ n de Profesorado Universitario grant (FPU23/03341) from the Ministerio de Universidades. S.U.P. is supported by NIAID NIH R01 grants 1R01AI155630 and 1R01AI182001. L.M.-S. is supported by the Investigo program through the Ministerio de Trabajo y Economı´a Social, Servicio Pu´ blico de Empleo (SEPE), which is funded by ‘‘Plan de Recuperacio´ n, Transformacio´ n y Resiliencia’’ and ‘‘NextGenerationEU’’ of the European Union (2022-C23.I01). C.L.-S. and E.N.-B. are supported by a Rı´o Hortega (CM23/0019) and a Sara Borrell (CD23/00125) grant, respectively, from ISCIII. E.F.V. is supported by a CIHR project grant (PJT-183881) and holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Microbial Therapeutics and Nutrition in Gastroenterology. L.Z. and S.B. received funding from NIAID NIH R01 AI147028 and U196053.

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