Two large trials, DREAM and MENSA have found IL-5 therapy with mepolizumab to lower risk of exacerbation in patients with asthma with an eosinophilic phenotype.
Childhood asthma risk is affected not only by mother’s smoking, but by in utero exposure to grandmother’s smoking. A recent longitudinal study was performed to evaluate effects of grandmother’s smoking on childhood asthma risk. It looked at 966 cases of asthma and 5,915 controls without asthma.
Prenatal exposure of the mother to cigarette smoke did not affect the grandchildren’s risk of being diagnosed with asthma. However, paternal prenatal exposure to their own mother’s smoking was associated with increased risk of persistent wheezing in the daughters of those fathers.
While these results are interesting, the author caution that the results are based on reported symptoms without corroborating biologic evidence.
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Two large trials, DREAM and MENSA have found IL-5 therapy with mepolizumab to lower risk of exacerbation in patients with asthma with an eosinophilic phenotype.
Mold allergy is difficult to diagnose due to lack of standardized test material.
The current standard for diagnosis of Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE) is endoscopy with esophageal biopsy to determine the eosinophil count
Skin prick testing and serum IgE measurement are limited in their ability to predict positive or negative responses to oral peanut challenge.
Bronchial Thermoplasty (BT) has been shown to result in significant improvements in a number of asthma control measures in three randomized clinical trials in patients with moderate-to-severe, persistent asthma.
Recent studies have suggested that early regular exposure to allergenic foods may reduce the risk of food allergy.