A new study has found that asthma may have a surprising link with the composition of the species of bacteria that inhabit bronchial airways. This finding could help the researchers in discovering a new treatment or even potential cures for the common inflammatory disease.

The new detection methods used in this study has helped the researchers in finding that the diversity of microbes inside the respiratory tract is more vast than previously suspected. This diversity creates complex and inter-connected microbial neighborhood that appears to be associated with asthma.

MD, Homer Boushey, a UCSF Professor of medicine in the division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and co-author of the study says that most of the people believes that asthma was caused by inhalation of allergens but this study shows that it may be more complicated than that and asthma may involve colonization of the airways by multiple bacteria.

It was a three-year project in which samples from the airway linings of 65 adults with mild to moderate asthma were collected in addition to the samples of 10 healthy adults. Using a tool, scientists have found that bronchial airway samples from asthmatic patients contained far more bacteria than samples from healthy patients.