The Microorganisms and the Immune System Development of the Child

Journal title PNEI REVIEW
Author/s Riccardo Ortolani
Publishing Year 2018 Issue 2018/1 Language Italian
Pages 13 P. 63-75 File size 1150 KB
DOI 10.3280/PNEI2018-001006
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The human being has evolved and continues to evolve in a word of microorganisms. This relationship is more a symbiosis than a competition and both take advantage of this "cohabitation". In fact, the microbiota represents a part of our body, from the skin to the gastrointestinal tract, and the total number of bacteria cells exceeds that of human cells. The microbiota is very important for the competition with the pathogenic microorganisms and for the immune system development and balance. Some viruses have integrated their genomes into the human genome. Some viruses, especially herpes ones, cause a persistent infection that requires control of the immune system throughout life. A small part of the microbes is, or can become, pathogenic; it depends on the microbes but, more often and much more, from the host himself. Epidemiological data about infant mortality in Europe, from the second half of the 19th century up to after the Second World War, clearly show how the impact of some pathogens on the infant mortality steadily decreased as a result of the improvement of living conditions. Epidemiological data about the second half of the 20th century clearly show an inverse correlation between the incidence of some common infectious diseases and the incidence of some immune disorders: is this a simple coincidence or some kind of causal relationship can be hypothesized?

Keywords: Vaccines, Vaccine policies, Law 119/2017, Bioethics, Science, Medical conscience.

  1. Amenyogbe N., Kollmann T.R. and Ben-Othman R. (2017). Early-Life Host-Microbiome Interphase: The Key Frontier for Immune Development. Front. Pediatr., 5: 111. DOI: 10.3389/FPED.2017.0011
  2. Anaya J.M., Ramirez-Santana C., Alzate M.A., Molano-Gonzales N. and Rojas-Villarraga A. (2016). The Autoimmune Ecology. Front. Immunol., 7: 139. DOI: 10.3389/FIMMU.2016.0013
  3. Angeletti L.R. e Gazzaniga V. (2012). Storia, filosofia ed etica generale della medicina. Milano: Elsevier.
  4. Bach J. (2002). The effect of infections on susceptibility to autoimmune and allergic diseases. NEJM, 347(12): 911-920. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMRA.02.010
  5. Blaser M.J. and Falkow S. (2009). What are the consequences of the disappearing human microbiota?. Nat. Rev. Microbiol., 7(12): 887-894. DOI: 10.1038/NRMICRO.224
  6. Borghans J.A.M., Noest A.J. and De Boer R.J. (1999). How specific should immunological memory be?. J. Immunol., 163(2): 569-575.
  7. Brodin P. and Davis M.M. (2016). Human immune system variation. Nat. Rev. Immunol., 17(1): 21-29. DOI: 10.1038/NRI.2016.12
  8. Brodin P., Jojic V., Gao T., Bhattacharya S., Lopez Angel C.J., Furman D., Shen-Orr S., Dekker C.L., Swan G.E., Butte A.J., Maecker H.T. and Davis M.M. (2015). Variation in the Human Immune System is Largely Driven by Non-Heritable Influences. Cell, 160(1-2): 37-47. DOI: 10.1016/J.CELL.2014.12.02
  9. Hu W. and Pasare C. (2017). Location, location, location: tissue-specific regulation of immune responses. J. Leukoc. Biol., 94(3):409-421. DOI: 10.1189/JLB.041320
  10. Laforest-Lapointe I. and Arrieta M-C. (2017). Pattern of Early-Life Gut Microbial Colonization during Human Immune Development: An Ecological Perspective. Front. Immunol., 8: 788. DOI: 10.3389/FIMMU.2017.0078
  11. Morella N.M. and Koskella B. (2017). The value of a Comparative Approach to Understand the Complex Interplay between Microbiota and Host Immunity. Front. Immunol., 8: 1114. DOI: 10.3389/FIMMU.2017.0111
  12. Ortolani R., Bellavite P., Paiola F., Martini M., Marchesini M., Veneri D., Franchini M., Chirumbolo S., Tridente G. and Vella A. (2010). A comparative method for processing immunological parameters: developing an “Immunogram”. Blood Transfus., 8(2): 118-125. DOI: 10.2450/2009.0096-0
  13. Rook G.A. (2013). Regulation of the immune system by biodiversity from the natural environment: An ecosystem service essential to health. PNAS, 110(46): 18360-18367. DOI: 10.1073/PNAS.131373111
  14. Zeissig S. and Blumberg R. (2014). Life at the beginning: perturbation of the microbiota by antibiotics in early life and its role in health and disease. Nat. Immunol., 15(4): 307-310. DOI: 10.1038/NI.284

Riccardo Ortolani, Agenti microbici e sviluppo del sistema immunitario del bambino in "PNEI REVIEW" 1/2018, pp 63-75, DOI: 10.3280/PNEI2018-001006