Emma Guttman
University of Rochester, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Atopic dermatitis (AD), or eczema, often starts in a baby's first year. It is frequently followed by food allergy (FA) and later by respiratory allergies, a sequence called the atopic march.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
atopic dermatitis
eczema
food allergy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2028
What they work on
- Identify skin gene, protein and microbiome biomarkers that raise the risk of atopic dermatitis or support a healthy skin barrier, comparing high-risk Rochester infants with low-risk Old Order Mennonite infants.
- Determine skin biomarkers that promote or protect against food allergy and other allergic conditions, with and without eczema, using skin tape strips, microbiome swabs and transepidermal water loss in a birth cohort.
- Test whether a farming lifestyle and early environmental exposures shape infant skin barrier, immunity and microbiome in ways linked to protection from allergic sensitization.
More about the research
These conditions are rising in industrialized countries, and no prevention strategy has yet worked. Growing up on a farm is linked to a more diverse microbiome, the community of microbes living on and in the body, and to less allergy. The team has shown that children of Old Order Mennonites (OOM), a traditional farming community, have very little early allergic disease: 3.8% AD and 0% FA. In contrast, a high-risk Rochester cohort (ROC) born to allergic families shows 30% AD and 15% FA. Why farm life protects these children is unknown.
Why it matters
Eczema and food allergy are increasingly common in infants, and no prevention strategy has worked. Identifying skin genes, pathways and microbes that protect farm-raised children, or put high-risk infants at risk, could lead to new ways to prevent or treat atopic dermatitis and the progression to food and respiratory allergies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Debajyoti Ghosh
University of Cincinnati, OH·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine whether perinatal dysbiosis, an imbalanced microbial community in early life, makes mice more susceptible to skin-associated allergic diseases by weakening the skin barrier.
Masanori Matsumoto
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Use a new atopic dermatitis-like mouse model, with S. aureus applied to the skin, to test whether the Agr quorum-sensing system drives skin inflammation by causing keratinocytes to release alarmin danger signals.
Katrina Abuabara
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Develop machine-learning models that predict persistent atopic dermatitis in late childhood from simple early-life factors, and compare their performance across birth cohorts in Uganda, Ecuador, and the United Kingdom.
The school
University of Rochester: 38 labs on PI Pages, $492M a year on research, 308 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.