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Meeting Australia's Climate Change Targets: Price, Opportunity and Pathways: A Pre-Election Forum

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'Bandicoot Bungalows' providing much needed accommodation in the Mt Lofty Ranges

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Adelaide researchers record deepest ever sea snake dive

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Could urban biodiversity help combat chronic disease?

Replanting urban environments with native flora could be a cost effective way to improve public health because it will help 鈥榬ewild鈥 the environmental and human microbiota, 成人大片 researchers say.

In a new paper, published in , researchers say that humans 鈥 thought of as 鈥榟olobionts鈥, a symbiosis of host and microorganisms reliant on ecosystem health and biodiversity for optimal health outcomes 鈥 and more specifically, urban populations, are in dire need of more natural habitat to address chronic disease rates.

In an effort to stem rising global rates of non-communicable diseases like asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and allergies which have been linked to less diverse human microbiomes, researchers suggest restoration of urban microbial biodiversity through rewilding could help address chronic health problems.

Lead author Jacob Mills, from The Environment Institute at the 成人大片, said that evidence is pointing towards humans needing healthy, natural, and microbially-rich environments to properly develop as healthy holobionts.

鈥淲e are more than human, cell-for-cell we are 57% microbial, we鈥檙e walking ecosystems. Our symbiotic microbial partners, or our 鈥極ld Friends鈥 as they鈥檙e known, come from our mother and wider habitat when we鈥檙e young. These microorganisms play vital roles in our health, particularly our immune training and regulation,鈥欌 he said.

鈥淥ne cause for the rapid increase of non-communicable diseases in urban populations is thought to be a decrease in biodiversity, including microbial diversity, of human habitat through urbanisation.

鈥淎s it stands with current urban designs, people are poorly exposed to their 鈥極ld Friends鈥 and partially because of this we have decreased our health status through improper immune training and regulation. Most microbes are actually beneficial or neutral, only rarely do they cause disease.鈥

Researchers suggest that restoring native plant communities to urban areas could provide generational health benefits and result in huge savings for health care sectors 鈥 they estimate that if urban restoration can reduce health costs by 5% then the European Union could save 鈧230-to-280 million per year on inflammatory bowel disease alone.

鈥淩estoring plant communities provides habitat for animals and changes soil, water, and air conditions, all of which impact on the environmental microbiota, generating a more natural microbial community,鈥欌 Mr Mills said.

鈥淏iodiversity restoration could be a cheap health care intervention with the possibility of enormous savings for health care sectors which can be spent in other areas of need. It also comes with co-benefits 鈥 like urban heat-island mitigation, pollution capture, and species conservation 鈥 which makes it a no-regrets intervention.鈥

Image: Urban biodiversity to lower chronic disease. iStock image.

Original media release in News

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New Environment Institute member Professor Volker Hessel scoops $16 million EU grant for SCOPE project

[Read more about New Environment Institute member Professor Volker Hessel scoops $16 million EU grant for SCOPE project]

Success at the Climate Change Update 2019 - Adelaide

[Read more about Success at the Climate Change Update 2019 - Adelaide]

WORKSHOP: Threatened flora translocation 3rd May 2019

[Read more about WORKSHOP: Threatened flora translocation 3rd May 2019]

New Zealand's giant extinct bird traced back to Africa

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Sea snakes avoid predators by "seeing" tails

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7000 years of drought and rainfall found in preserved leaves

[Read more about 7000 years of drought and rainfall found in preserved leaves]

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