While it's important to follow public health orders to reduce spread of COVID-19, experts say that all the antibacterial wipes and physical distancing could have long-term impacts on our microbiomes — the collection of microbes that live on and inside our bodies.
When we hug someone, travel to another country or get our hands dirty, we acquire new microbes, said Brett Finlay, a University of British Columbia microbiologist. Although some microbes can make us sick, others are good for us, and a diverse and rich microbiome is essential to our health, he said.
Finlay said the discovery of pasteurization in the late 1800s kicked off about a century of society being "hellbent" on getting rid of microbes, and infectious diseases declined as a result. But the loss of microbial diversity has been linked to conditions including asthma, obesity, diabetes and brain and cardiovascular diseases, he said.
So, especially over the past decade, experts like Finlay, who co-wrote a book titled "Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Our Children from an Oversanitized World," have been trying to persuade people to be a little less afraid of germs.
"We were cruising along, starting to realize these microbes are good. Maybe we shouldn't wipe them all out. Maybe we should let our kids play outside and maybe we don't have to use hand sanitizer five times on the playground," Finlay said.
"Then COVID hit and that has thrown a wrench in everything."
Finlay recently co-authored a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that called for more study of how this extended period of near-global lockdown has changed our microbiomes and could affect human health long-term.
The paper was the result of ongoing discussions at research organization CIFAR's humans and the microbiome program, where Finlay is co-director. It says we could see impacts to global immunity, allergies and rates of conditions like asthma and diabetes.
It also points out that the COVID-19 pandemic could deepen social inequalities, with changes to the microbiome depending on whether someone lives in a high- or low-income country and their access to health care, clean water, sewage systems and healthy food....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>>...