Allergies are on the rise, however, there’s still a great deal we don’t know about what causes them. A new study published on December 17 in Frontiers on Microbiology investigates how allergic rhinitis and asthma might be affected by our nasal mycobiome—or in less technical terms, the fungi that live in our noses.

People with allergy sniffles and asthma have different fungal colonies in their noses than folks who don't suffer respiratory allergies, researchers report.

"We showed that allergic rhinitis samples displayed a significantly higher fungal diversity," researcher Luís Delgado has confirmed.

Nearly a quarter of Portuguese adults have allergies that cause a runny nose. This respiratory disease, formally called allergic rhinitis and frequently associated with asthma, is a common problem around the world,