Results tagged “study” from Allergy

Small doses of peanut protein, given for months under medical supervision, can desensitize children with peanut allergy, reducing the risk of a reaction if they accidentally eat peanuts, according to a new study.

In other new research, scientists say they have found a way to predict which children are likely to outgrow their allergy to peanuts.

Both studies were presented Saturday at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in San Diego.

Children who start drinking fresh milk from the farm early on are less likely to develop allergies when they are of school age, according to Swiss scientists.

But why more people are suffering allergies remains unclear, say researchers at Basel University, who have begun a study involving more than 14,000 children.

Cows' milk as food for infants has a bad reputation. From a nutritional perspective it does not fulfil the dietary requirements of babies, and children who are fed only cows' milk for too long often suffer an iron deficiency.

A fresh study by the Environmental Health section of the National Public Health Institute shows a strong link between asthma in children and dampness in the building structures of the home.

According to an article in the upcoming edition of the European Respiratory Journal, at least one in ten, and possibly as many as one in five cases of asthma among children are linked with water damage in the building.

The onset of asthma is the result of the cumulative effect of many factors. Nevertheless, in the 1990s there was a rapid increase in cases of asthma in Finland, as well as an increase in damage caused by dampness in buildings.

Asthmatics are more likely than other Australians to be obese and suffer other long-term health conditions, a new study says.

Australian researchers have found more than one in five asthma patients are obese, and fewer than half had a normal body mass index.

Only about 38 per cent of middle aged asthmatics had a normal body mass index.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report concluded people with asthma aged 18 to 64 were more likely to be obese than those who had never had asthma, but could not identify the reason.

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 26 -- Freeway traffic pollution can retard lung development of children whose homes are not far from the side of the road, researchers here reported.

Children exposure to traffic pollution during their rapid pulmonary development, from ages 10 to 18, had eight-year lung growth that was significantly stunted, W. James Gauderman, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California here, and colleagues, reported online in The Lancet.

The lung growth was slowed in children who lived within 500 meters (about a third of a mile) of a freeway compared with children who lived 1,500 meters (about one mile) or more away, the investigators found.

FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) said Thursday the findings of a study on respiratory combination drugs by the German Institute for the Evaluation of Drugs, or IQWIG, are inconclusive.

The study found that patients suffering from asthma didn't respond better to combination drugs, such as AstraZeneca's Symbicort, than to the use of two drugs alone.

The study also included GlaxoSmithkline PLC's (GSK) Viani and Schwarz Pharma AG's (SRZ.XE) Atmadisc.

AstraZeneca said in a statement that the IQWIG findings are preliminary and that the institute didn't use the latest clinical data available for the Symbicort drug.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Asthma sufferers are much more likely to use drugs that offer fast relief of symptoms, according to new U.S. research.

About 31 percent of sufferers said they use fast-acting medications, while only 14 percent said they use longer-term, preventive treatments, according to a new study by Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Another 31 percent of people with asthma said they use both types of medications, and 24 percent said they use none, according to the study.

Reducing salt intake may affect asthma severity and breathing in adults with the condition, says a joint Anglo-American review of the science.

The review looks set to continue to put pressure on the food industry to reach the targets set out by an increasing number of food agencies to cut salt intake. In the USA, UK and Ireland, over 80 per cent of salt intake comes from processed food.

The authors of the new review, Timothy Mickleborough from Indiana University and Andrew Fogarty from the University of Nottingham, analyse both epidemiological and clinical evidence and conclude that, collectively, increased salt intake may increase the severity of asthma for people with the disease.

Patients with obstructive lung diseases receive only about 55 percent of recommended medical care, according to a study that reflects the increasing health-care challenges of an aging population.

"The quality of care provided to patients with obstructive lung diseases is not as good as it should be or needs to be," said Dr. Richard Mularski, with Kaiser's Portland-based Center for Health Research.

Mularski is lead author of the study, which was published in the December issue of the journal Chest. The RAND Corp. study is part of the largest examination of the quality of American health care ever undertaken.

ISLAMABAD - Preschool children who regularly snore are more likely to have asthma and nocturnal cough than those who do not snore, according to the results of a study published in the August issue of Chest.

Dr. Jennifer K. Peat, of the University of Sydney, Australia, and colleagues measured the prevalence of habitual snoring and other respiratory conditions in preschool children between the ages of two and five years old. Nine hundred seventy-four children were included in the study.

Fifty-four of 516 boys (10.5%) and 48 of 458 girls (10.5%) were snorers on at least four nights per week. No association between snoring and age was observed.

Many experts believe the current advice to parents to keep peanuts away from their babies may be making the problem worse.

In Africa, Asia and China, where peanuts are a staple food and routinely given to young children, rates of peanut allergy are lower than they are in the West.

Other research suggests the opposite - that early exposure to peanuts makes an individual more susceptible.

Parents are being asked to volunteer their babies for a major investigation into the causes of peanut allergy.

 

The average adult gets two to four colds a year, and if they're around children, it doubles. While there is a whole host of medications claiming to make your cough better, new research finds many don't work. A new study finds more effective help may be available from some unlikely candidates.

Cough medicines are a multi-billion-dollar industry. The vast assortment is nothing to sneeze at, but what has confused many patients is recent research which found many of these cough medicines don't work for most coughs.

Dr. Richard Irwin headed up a worldwide study. He found expectorants -- medicines that help remove mucus -- and the newer non-drowsy medicines are ineffective against cough caused by the common cold.

 

New Delhi, Nov. 28 (ANI) - A concoction of herbal drugs used in Unani Medicine has shown encouraging results in the treatment of chronic lung diseases, such as asthma.

The coded combination Asthma-5 has shown good response in chronic patients of bronchial asthma. In mild and moderate asthma the drug has shown significant symptomatic relief.

The drug took about 15 days to reach the optimum level, the study said. It was also noted that the maximum effect was seen after 90 days of treatment.

ISLAMABAD - The results of a study published in the November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry suggest there is an association between asthma and a range of mental disorders.

Dr. Renee D. Goodwin, of Columbia University, New York, and colleagues studied a sample of 13,222 adults in Germany. Current and lifetime asthma cases were identified based on physician diagnosis, and the Composite International Diagnostic Interview was used to assess current and lifetime mental disorders.

The researchers found that 2.7 percent of the subjects currently had asthma and 5.74 percent had a history of asthma.

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 13 -- Rodent allergies, particularly sensitivity to mouse allergens, are common among inner city children, and may be the primary triggers for moderate-to-severe asthma, reported researchers here.

A retrospective study showed that 31% of inner city children in a small sample were sensitive to mouse allergens, and 18.5% were sensitized to rat allergens, said Philip Hemmers, D.O., of Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, .N.Y., and colleagues. 

"This study reinforces the importance of rodents in the allergic evaluation of inner-city children, especially those with moderate-severe asthma," the investigators wrote in a poster presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology meeting.

 

PHILADELPHIA -- Adding the long-acting beta₂-agonist Serevent (salmeterol) to an inhaled corticosteroid reduces the rate of asthma exacerbations and asthma-related hospitalizations, said researchers here. This was covered in New Options in COPD Therapy post.

Servent in combination with Flovent (fluticasone) was associated in the recent SMART (Salmeterol Multi-center Asthma Research Trial) study with severe asthma exacerbations, and an increased risk of life-threatening adverse events and respiratory deaths among African Americans, in particular. Those findings led the FDA to require a "black box" warning on long-acting beta₂ agonists.

This study by Marceau and colleagues reviewed the treatment adherence as well as the effectiveness of combination therapy among adults with asthma. The study notes that the current international, Canadian, and US asthma treatment guidelines, including the Global Initiative for Asthma, call for severity-based management of asthma, employing both symptoms and pulmonary function testing.

The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program guidelines call for the addition of long-acting beta agonists (LABAs) to inhaled corticosteroids (ICSs) when asthma is not well controlled using ICSs alone. The authors noted that both LABAs and ICSs have a complementary effect, addressing both bronchoconstriction and underlying airway inflammation. Both LABAs and ICSs may be given either concurrently (ie, with 2 separate inhalers) or in combination (ie, both medications in the same inhaler).

Once again I came across the opinion that germs-free environment is actually bad for children.

This topic was touched by the creators of website about vaccination hoax. You can read more here.

"Early exposure is needed to stimulate the immune system"

"The best means of preventing an allergy is mother's milk"

The original article is below

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 18 (HealthDay News) -- The way a healthy infant's lungs function at birth may provide clues to that child's future respiratory health, concludes a new study from Norway.

The study found that babies who performed poorly on lung function tests at birth were more likely to develop asthma before the age of 10.

"The study tells us that some children who later have asthma, breathe abnormally already at birth," said one of the study's authors, Dr. Geir Haland, a research fellow and assistant consultant at Ulleval University Hospital in Oslo. "Thus we may infer from this that the disease process of asthma may express itself through lung function [tests a] long time before symptoms appear and that, in some children, it may appear that the disease process is established already before birth."

What is causing the allergy? Different allergies have different triggers. Recently scientists from Virginia Commonwealth University have found a possible cause.

Mast cells are specialized cells that react to allergy-causing agents by releasing substances that trigger the body's allergic response, leading to conditions like asthma and hives. Among the molecules released by mast cells that participate in the allergic response is sphingosine-1-phosphate. This molecule is also implicated in cancer.