Category: Featured Stories and Interviews

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Can diet protect against asthma?

Can diet protect against asthma – hints a new review of the medical evidence

Reuters Health is reporting that, what you eat might affect your risk of developing allergies or asthma, and possibly that of your kids, hints a new review of the medical evidence.

Researchers found zinc, vitamins A, D, and E, as well as fruits and vegetables, seemed to have a protective role, but they stress the data are too preliminary to draw any firm conclusions.

“The short answer is that it is too early to tell,” said Dr. Graham Devereux of the University of Aberdeen in the UK, who worked on the study.

As a result, pregnant women and parents should not change their diets solely for the purpose of protecting their kids from allergies, Devereux added in an e-mail to Reuters Health.

“Currently there is no evidence that changing diet makes any difference,” he said.

More than seven percent of adult Americans, and even more kids, have asthma, and the lung disease has been on the rise in recent decades for unknown reasons.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it now causes more than 13 million annual visits to emergency rooms and doctors’ offices.

Devereux and his colleagues, whose findings appear in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, reviewed 62 recent studies that looked at diet and risk of allergy and asthma.

All studies were based on records of women’s diets and other observations, a much weaker design than clinical trials in which people are given supplements or foods to eat.

Of the 22 studies that looked at fruit and vegetable intake, 17 linked healthier diets to lower risks of asthma and allergies. And two reports suggested that children with higher levels of vitamin A in their bodies had a 75 percent lower risk of developing asthma.

Pregnant women who ate a lot of vitamins D — found in fatty fish — and E — found in nuts and seeds — were between 30 and 40 percent less likely to have a child who wheezed, often a sign of asthma.

Also, sticking to a Mediterranean diet — rich in vegetables, fish and monounsaturated fats from olive oil and nuts, but low in saturated fat from meat and dairy — during pregnancy was also tied to a drop of nearly 80 percent in babies’ risk of wheezing.

But the studies didn’t find any apparent benefits from vitamin C or selenium.

“I’m sure that most people would agree that pregnant women and children, with or without asthma, should eat a ‘healthy’ diet,” said Dr. Nancy Lange of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who was not involved in the study.

But she added that the findings from this study “are not sufficient to suggest that any specific changes in diet will affect allergy or asthma risk, either increasing or decreasing it.”

What the field needs now, said Lange, is interventional studies, in which investigators control a person’s intake of specific nutrients, and note the effects.

“Diet and specific dietary elements — nutrients, foods, etc. — can be difficult to analyze because there are so many confounding factors, therefore it is difficult to say anything conclusively without results from interventional studies,” Lange said in an e-mail.

Ultimately, these studies may show diet has some impact on asthma risk, perhaps by affecting development of the lungs or immune system, reducing inflammation, or curbing the generation of free radicals, Lange added.

SOURCE: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 2010

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New treatment for severe Asthma – UC Davis Health System

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Ariel Noriega remembers her first debilitating asthma attack. She was in elementary school playing basketball. Since then, both asthma and sports have been central in her life. A new treatment now available at UC Davis Health System, however, may allow the 20-year-old college water polo player to concentrate more on sports.

Recommended for those with severe asthma that does not always respond to medication, the treatment — known as bronchial thermoplasty — removes portions of smooth muscle tissue in the lungs that constrict during an asthma attack.

“Newer medications are very effective for most people with severe asthma, but they don’t work for everyone,” said Nicholas Kenyon, a UC Davis associate professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine and one of Noriega’s physicians. “We’re lucky to have this option in our treatment arsenal, especially in Sacramento, which is one of the asthma hubs in California.”

Asthma — a chronic disease that inflames and narrows lung airways — currently affects 23 million people nationwide, including 7 million children. It is a leading cause of school and work absences and trips to emergency rooms, and is directly or indirectly linked with as many as 11,000 deaths each year. Allergens, tobacco smoke, ozone, particle pollution and exercise are among the known triggers of attacks.

Noriega’s asthma has been relieved somewhat by drugs that target both constriction and inflammation, but side effects like weight gain and diabetes have been detrimental, and bad attacks still send her to emergency rooms several times a year. It was after one of those ER trips that she decided to find a different approach.

UC Davis was the first California medical facility to offer bronchial thermoplasty after the technology was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in April 2010. Developed by Sunnyvale-based Asthmatx, the treatment involves three outpatient sessions in the hospital, during which a small, flexible bronchoscope with four thin wires and a tiny camera on the end is inserted into the lungs. Using images projected onto a monitor, the bronchoscope is directed to asthma-sensitive areas, where the wires expand and heat is applied to treat the tissue. Each session lasts less than an hour. Patients typically go home the same day or can be admitted for a brief observation period, depending on how well the procedure is tolerated.

“Because the lung lining is forever changed, the hope is that this can be a long-term fix for severe exacerbations,” said Kenyon, who co-directs a UC Davis clinic dedicated to treating difficult-to-control asthma.

Noriega, UC Davis’ first bronchial thermoplasty patient, completed her final treatment in October. How well it worked will be known in the coming months and based on the frequency of her use of “rescue” medication and emergency interventions.

“Hopefully, it will be less of everything,” said Noriega, who was raised in El Dorado Hills and now attends California State University, East Bay. “I have just two more years of NCAA eligibility, and I want to be able to do my absolute best.”

For more information about the treatment, e-mail Celeste Kivler with the UC Davis severe asthma clinic at celeste.kivler@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu.

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Asthma and Food Allergies

Asthma and Food Allergies: Children, Males and Blacks are at increased risk for Food Allergies says new NIH Study

A new study estimates that 2.5 percent of the United States population, or about 7.6 million Americans, have food allergies. Food allergy rates were found to be higher for children, non-Hispanic blacks, and males, according to the researchers. The odds of male black children having food allergies were 4.4 times higher than others in the general population.

The research, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health and appears in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, is the first to use a nationally representative sample, as well as specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) or antibody levels to quantify allergic sensitization to common foods, including peanuts, milk, eggs, and shrimp. The hallmark of food allergy is production of IgE antibodies to a specific food protein. Once IgE antibody is made, further exposure to the food triggers an allergic response. IgE levels are often high in people with allergies.

“This study is very comprehensive in its scope. It is the first study to use specific blood serum levels and look at food allergies across the whole life spectrum, from young children aged 1 to 5, to adults 60 and older,” said Darryl Zeldin, M.D., acting clinical director at the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and senior author on the paper. “This research has helped us identify some high risk populations for food allergies.” In addition to the identification of race, ethnicity, gender, and age as risk factors for food allergies, the researchers also found an association between food allergy and severe asthma.

Food allergy rates were highest (4.2 percent) for children 1 to 5 years. The lowest rates (1.3 percent) were found in adults over the age of 60. The prevalence of peanut allergies in children aged 1 to 5 was 1.8 percent and in children aged 6 to19, it was 2.7 percent. In adults, the rate was 0.3 percent.

The odds of patients with asthma and food allergies experiencing a severe asthma attack were 6.9 times higher than those without clinically defined food allergies.

“This study provides further credence that food allergies may be contributing to severe asthma episodes, and suggests that people with a food allergy and asthma should closely monitor both conditions and be aware that they might be related,” said Andrew Liu, M.D., of National Jewish Health and the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver, and lead author on the paper.

The data used for the study comes from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005-2006. NHANES is a large nationally representative survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Zeldin and Liu note more research is needed to understand why certain groups are at increased risk for food allergy. The authors comment in the paper that food allergies may be under-recognized in blacks, males, and children, because previous studies relied on self-reporting and not food-specific serum IgE levels.

“Having an accurate estimate of the prevalence of food allergies is helpful to public health policy makers, schools and day care facilities, and other care providers as they plan and allocate resources to recognize and treat food allergies,” said Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., NIEHS director.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation’s Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases.

Reference: Liu AH, Jaramillo R, Sicherer SH, Wood RA, Bock SA, Burks AW, Massing M, Cohn RD, Zeldin DC. National prevalence and risk factors for food allergy and relationship to asthma: Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005-2006. J Allergy Clin Immunol. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaci.2010.07.026.

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Asthma and Stress

Asthma and Stress Related Says Survey

People who regularly feel stressed out by their jobs may have a higher risk of developing asthma than those with a more-relaxed work atmosphere, a new study suggests.

High on-the-job stress has been linked to a number of health consequences, including heightened risks of heart disease, diabetes and depression.

The new findings, published in the journal Allergy, are the first to show an association between work stress and later asthma risk, according to the researchers.

The investigators found that among more than 5,100 adults they followed for nearly a decade, those who reported high job stress at the outset were twice as likely as those with low levels of work stress to develop asthma.

The odds of any study participant being newly diagnosed with asthma were low, however. Among those with high job stress, 2.4 percent developed asthma during the study period, compared with 1.3 percent of men and women who reported little on-the-job stress.

The findings do not prove that work stress, itself, is the reason for the relatively higher asthma rate.

But the findings build on other evidence that chronic stress may contribute to asthma development in some people, write Dr. Adrian Loerbroks and colleagues at Heidelberg University in Germany.

Other studies, they note, have linked distressing life events and stress-related personality traits, for example, to heightened asthma risk.

For their study, Loerbroks and his colleagues used data from 5,114 adults, aged 40 to 65 years, who completed questionnaires on their health, lifestyle and jobs, and then were followed for 8.5 years.

Work stress was measured by a questionnaire that asked participants to rate how much strain they felt at work, and how often, at the end of the workday, they thought about work or felt exhausted or unable to cope with their job demands.

Overall, participants with high scores on the work-stress measure tended to have higher asthma rates at the outset. Moreover, among men and women who were asthma-free, those with high job stress were twice as likely to develop the lung condition over the follow-up period.

That higher risk was seen even with a number of other variables taken into account, including body weight, exercise habits, smoking, and family history of asthma.

It is not fully clear why work stress, itself, might affect asthma risk in some people.

Less-healthy lifestyle did not appear to account for the relationship, the researchers note, so it’s possible that there are direct effects of chronic stress on the hormonal and immune systems that contribute to asthma development — by, for example, making the airways more prone to inflammation in response to an environmental trigger.

The researchers point out, however, that even if work stress does raise asthma risk in some people, the absolute risk to any one worker would be small — given that only 2 percent of all study participants developed asthma over 8.5 years.

And from a public-health standpoint, the researchers write, curbing on-the-job stress would prevent only a small number of asthma cases.

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Puerto Rico Struggles With Asthma Epidemic

Puerto Rico Struggles With Asthma Epidemic Says News Reports

Puerto Rico is a U.S. Caribbean territory where children are nearly 300 percent more likely to have the respiratory ailment than white non-Hispanic children in the continental United States. And this year, Puerto Rico has seen a jump in asthma cases, which health officials suspect might be linked to the heavy rains that have unleashed millions of spores.

The island, with a population of 4 million, already has 2.5 times the death rate stemming from asthma as the mainland, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Puerto Ricans in the U.S. also have been hit hard by asthma, with an asthma attack rate 2.5 times higher than for whites.

Adding to the problem is that Puerto Rican children do not respond as well as those from other ethnic groups to the number one medication prescribed to asthmatics: Albuterol, which comes in an inhaler used to relieve sudden attacks. As a result, several major pharmaceutical companies are working to create another medication, but they are still years away from doing so.

“What’s a challenge is that Puerto Ricans are not all the same,” said Dr. Esteban Gonzalez Burchard, director of the Center for Genes, Environments & Health at the University of California, San Francisco. “(They) are racially mixed.”

Those with European ancestry are likely most at risk of developing asthma, he said.

No one knows for certain why Puerto Ricans suffer so much from asthma, despite decades of research.

Theories include volcanic ash that drifts in from nearby Montserrat, clouds of Sahara dust that blanket the city in the summer and fungi that flourish in the tropical humidity – particularly bad this year, the wettest on record.

Some researchers suspect poverty and the fact that tens of thousands of people like Jaycco live in dingy public housing projects with mice and cockroaches – known asthma triggers.

“Asthma is huge in Puerto Rico,” Gonzalez said. “Compared to other populations, it’s extremely high.”

Puerto Ricans, even when living in the same environmental conditions as other ethnic groups, still show higher rates of asthma, he said, which suggests that genes are at least partly to blame.

U.S. and Puerto Rican health officials have launched many research projects to attack the problem, but in the meantime, it is costing the island untold amounts in lost productivity and missed school days, burdening a health care system already overwhelmed with wheezing kids.

Jaycco, whose Spiderman lunchbox is filled with medicine, has missed several weeks of school this year but his family tries to minimize his outbreaks. The boy, who lives in the Caribbean’s largest public housing complex, Luis Llorens Torres, is rarely left alone. Most of the time, he bikes, runs and skates inside the house under his mother’s watch. When outside, he carries a list of emergency phone numbers.

An average of 25,000 asthma-related emergency room claims are filed a year, and in the span of one year, nearly 90,000 Puerto Rican adults could not work or do regular activities because of asthma, according to a 2007 and a 2009 study by the island’s health department.

Asthma takes the fun out of childhood and makes parents anxious, because they do not know when the next attack might be coming, said Dr. Gilberto Ramos, a professor at the graduate School of Health at the University of Puerto Rico.

“There is nothing worse than watching a child have an asthma attack,” he said. “You think they are going to die.”

Asthma usually hits people in the U.S. Caribbean territory as infants.

Nearly 30 percent of children in Puerto Rico are diagnosed with asthma, and the rate increases to 40 percent among kids in public housing projects, said Dr. Floyd Malveaux, former dean of the College of Medicine at Howard University.

“Unfortunately, the children in Puerto Rico do have the highest rates in the world,” he said. “Whether it’s more genetics or more environment, we don’t know.”

Malveaux is overseeing a $1 million, four-year program funded by the Merck Childhood Asthma Network that will target asthmatics in one of San Juan’s largest public housing projects next year. The aim is to provide access to better health care and teach parents and children how to prevent attacks.

A similar project in the early 2000s targeted two other housing projects in San Juan, where health officials monitored more than 200 asthmatics and visited their homes to encourage people to quit smoking and help eliminate mold, cockroaches and other allergens.

Emergency room visits dropped by 30 percent, but living and working in such an environment has its drawbacks, said Dr. Marielena Lara, a pediatrician and policy researcher at the RAND Corporation in California who was involved in the study. Drive-by shootings and other frequent violent incidents would force children to stay at home and miss appointments, and parents also had other priorities, she said.

“If you’re poor, you’re many times overwhelmed with getting out of poverty,” she said. “You might have less time to make an appointment with a doctor.”

Children with uncontrolled asthma can miss more than two weeks of school a year, often forcing single parents to forgo work. Even when children go to school, teachers have no training or resources to deal with an asthma attack, said Dr. Alberto Rivera Rentas, who researched the effect of fungi on asthma in Puerto Rico and works for the U.S. National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

People with asthma often feel like they are being suffocated and have a heavy weight on their chest. Some describe an attack as trying to breathe quickly through a very narrow straw. Jayyco says it’s as if his throat is tightening but he doesn’t say much more about it. “It bothers me,” he says with a shrug.

In the absence of any concrete explanations for the high asthma rate, health officials in the capital of San Juan are bolstering an education program that aims to reduce the number of emergency room visits by teaching patients how to manage the chronic disease.

An average of 2,000 people a month visit eight clinics that are part of the program to receive treatment for an asthma attack, said Hector Sorrentini, the city’s health director. This year, he said, there has been a significant increase in the caseload. Why? He’s not sure – it’s another part of the mystery.

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UCLA Asthma Study Connects Poverty and Asthma

UCLA California Asthma Study Connects Poverty and Asthma

Almost 5 million Californians have been diagnosed with asthma. On December 16, 2010, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research released the results of a study, which analyzed asthma in California. They found a significant relationship between poverty and asthma; residents living in poverty suffer more severe consequences from the condition than those in higher income brackets. They also found that asthma is increasing in the state of California: it has increased from 11.3% in 2001 to 13.0% in 2007. A summary of the findings are listed below.

Lost productivity:

In 2007, Californians missed an estimated 1.2 million days of work and 1.6 million days of school because of asthma. Income was a significant factor. Low-income sufferers missed an average of 2.2 days of work, compared with an average of 0.6 days of work missed by those with higher incomes. Low-income children missed twice as many days of school due to asthma as children from higher-income families.

Preventable urgent care:

Rates of emergency department visits for asthma were twice as high for low-income adults than they were for high-income adults (low-income: 18.8%; high-income: 8.8%). Low-income children also sought emergency treatment more frequently (low-income: 23.9%; high-income: 12.5%). Hospitalization rates were six times higher for low-income adults.

Health insurance:

Low-income Californians suffering from asthma were five times as likely to be uninsured (22.1%) as their counterparts with asthma earning twice as much (4.4%).

Los Angeles County has a lower than average rate:

In several counties, the prevalence of asthma among children and adults was lower than that of the state. San Francisco, Monterey, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Riverside counties had a significantly lower rate. The rates were significantly lower than the statewide prevalence of 8.3%. Significantly higher rates were found in the following counties: Tehama, Glenn, Colusa, Sutter, Yuba, Contra Costa, Solano, Sacramento, Fresno, Kern, Merced, Madera, and San Bernardino. These counties have a higher number of low-income residents.

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Inhaled Steroids May Increase Diabetes Risk

Inhaled Corticosteroids Increase Diabetes Mellitus Risk According to New Study published in the American Journal of Medicine

Inhaled corticosteroids are widely used in the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, these drugs may be associated with diabetes development and progression. In a study published in the most recent issue of The American Journal of Medicine, researchers found that inhaled corticosteroids were associated with a 34% increase in the rate of diabetes onset and in the rate of diabetes progression. At the highest inhaled doses the risk increased by 64% in diabetes onset and 54% in diabetes progression.

Although inhaled corticosteroids are recommended only for patients with the most severe COPD, current practice has led to their use in less severe cases. In fact, over 70% of all patients with COPD are using inhaled corticosteroids. Since COPD and diabetes tend to increase with age, it is particularly important to assess any possible interaction between inhaled corticosteroid use and deterioration in glycemic control.

Investigators from McGill University and the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, used data from over 380,000 patients treated for respiratory diseases identified in the Quebec health insurance databases. 30,167 patients developed diabetes during 5 ½ years of follow-up and another 2099 who progressed from oral hypoglycemic treatment to insulin.

Lead investigator Samy Suissa, PhD, Center for Clinical Epidemiology, Lady Davis Research Institute, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Department of Medicine, McGill University, observed that “high doses of inhaled corticosteroids commonly used in patients with COPD are associated with an increase in the risk of requiring treatment for diabetes and of having to intensify therapy to include insulin. Therefore, patients instituting therapy with high doses of inhaled corticosteroids should be assessed for possible hyperglycemia and treatment with high doses of inhaled corticosteroids limited to situations where the benefit is clear.”

This large cohort allowed the accurate estimation of relative risk. There have been other major randomized trials that have not shown a significant association of inhaled corticosteroids and diabetes onset. In this study, the authors found an incidence of diabetes onset of 14.2 per 1000 patients per year. At that rate, previous studies may not have had sufficient data to detect the excess risk. “These are not insubstantial numbers,” commented Dr. Suissa. “Over a large population the absolute numbers of affected people are significant.”

The article is “Inhaled Corticosteroids and the Risks of Diabetes Onset and Progression” by Samy Suissa, PhD, Abbas Kezouh, PhD, Pierre Ernst, MD, MSc. It appears in The American Journal of Medicine, Volume 123, Issue 11 (November 2010) published by Elsevier.

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Asthma Research Breaks the Mold

Study finds cause of allergic reaction could be growing in your lungs

Scientists investigating the allergic reactions that asthmatics suffer towards a common mold/mould have discovered that many people with asthma actually had the mold/mould growing in their own lungs.

The research led by University of Leicester scientists at Glenfield Hospital has been published in the December 2010 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The team based in the Institute for Lung Health at the University of Leicester and Glenfield Hospital examined the impact on asthmatics of a common environmental mold/mould, Aspergillus fumigates, usually found in soil and compost heaps.

Professor Andy Wardlaw from the University of Leicester said: “Asthma is a very common condition where the breathing tubes (bronchi) can go into spasm making it difficult to breathe. Around a fifth of adults with severe asthma, which they have had for a long time, get permanent (fixed) narrowing of their bronchi. It is known that A. fumigatus can grow in the lungs of some people with asthma and mold/mould allergy, which can cause severe lung damage.

“This problem is thought to only affect a very small number of people with asthma; however, about half of people with severe asthma have evidence of allergy to moulds like A. fumigatus.”

Researchers in the Institute for Lung Health at the University of Leicester and Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, carried out a study funded by the Midlands Asthma and Allergy Research Association (MAARA, a Midlands based charity funding research into asthma and allergy research. www.maara.org) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), to determine whether the problem of A. fumigatus growing in the lungs is more common than previously thought, and whether this could explain the fixed narrowing of the airways that occurs in some people with asthma.

Professor Wardlaw added: “Our study showed that 6 out of 10 people with asthma who were allergic to A. fumigatus grew the mould from their sputum. We also found that if you were allergic to A. fumigatus you had more narrowing of the airways than if you were not allergic, and this was worse in patients from whom A. fumigatus was grown.

“Our research concluded that it is possible that fixed narrowing of breathing tubes in many people with asthma could be caused by A. fumigatus growing in their lungs.

“Treating individuals from whom A. fumigatus is detected with antibiotics against the mould may prevent fixed narrowing of the airways. ”

Contact: Professor Andy Wardlaw
01-162-563-841
University of Leicester

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Asthma Study Shows How Flu Infections May Prevent Asthma

Activating the right immune cells in infants could lead to new vaccine strategies

In a paper that suggests a new strategy to prevent asthma, scientists at Children’s Hospital Boston and their colleagues report that the influenza virus infection in young mice protected the mice as adults against the development of allergic asthma. The same protective effect was achieved by treating young mice with compound isolated from the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), a bacterium that colonizes the stomach and is best known for causing ulcers and increasing the risk of gastric cancers.

The findings, published online December 13 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, provide a potential immunological mechanism in support of the “hygiene hypothesis,” an idea that attributes the increasing rate of asthma and allergies to the successful reduction of childhood infections with vaccines and antibiotics. The hygiene hypothesis is also supported by epidemiological studies associating certain childhood infections, such as respiratory viral infections or gastrointestinal infection with H. pylori, with a lower risk of developing asthma.

“Some infections appear to result in important protective effects against asthma,” says Dale Umetsu, MD, Ph.D., of Children’s Division of Immunology, a senior author of the paper, and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “But we certainly don’t want to give people dangerous infections to prevent asthma. So if we can understand how infections prevent asthma, we may be able to replicate the good parts and avoid the bad parts of infection and develop new treatments for children to prevent asthma.”

In mice, influenza A infection appeared to confer its benefits by expanding an immature cell type in the lung known as natural killer T (NKT) cells, part of the innate immune system. The same beneficial NKT cells in the lung could be expanded by several NKT-stimulating molecules known as glycolipids, including one isolated from H. pylori.

The active infectious agents protected against asthma only if the mice were exposed when very young (2 weeks). “Flu infection in adult mice makes the allergic reaction worse,” says Ya–Jen Chang, Ph.D., first author and a postdoctoral fellow in Umetsu’s lab.

Previous studies examining the hygiene hypothesis have focused on the adaptive immune system, which features immune cells that are slow to respond but are able to develop long-term memory, such as those stimulated by each year’s flu vaccine or those involved in seasonal allergies.

In contrast, the new paper examines the innate immune system, which responds rapidly to infections and shapes adaptive immune responses. This study specifically focuses on NKT cells, one of the first responders to many infections. Previous work by Umetsu’s team implicated NKT cells as a cause of asthma. http://www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom/Site1339/mainpageS1339P1sublevel194.html. In contrast, the latest study reports on a new subset of inhibitory NKT cells that seem to prevent allergic reactions in the airways — if stimulated at the right time by the right infectious agents or the right glycolipid.

“In the absence of influenza A or the H. pylori compound, we see an expansion of NKT cells that cause asthma and allergies,” says Umetsu. “We’re now trying to understand how to specifically activate the inhibitory subset of NKT cells. Treatments focused on specifically expanding this inhibitory subset of cells in children might prevent the development of asthma.”

The researchers want to explore the therapeutic applications of the H. pylori glycolipid compound, synthesized by British lipid biochemist Petr Illarionov, Ph.D. “It might be a good candidate for an asthma vaccine,” says Chang. Umetsu wants to test the next generation of glycolipid compounds, and to illuminate their specific mechanism of action, with a more detailed characterization of the inhibitory NKT cells.

Funding: US National Institutes of Health, including stimulus funding from the 2009 Recovery Act; Bunning Food Allergy Project; and Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan.

Disclosure: Children’s Hospital Boston has filed for a provisional patent on the glycolipid compound formula to treat or prevent inflammatory disease.

Children’s Hospital Boston is home to the world’s largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both children and adults since 1869. More than 1,100 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 12 members of the Institute of Medicine and 13 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Children’s research community. Founded as a 20-bed hospital for children, Children’s Hospital Boston today is a 392-bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children and families. Children’s also is the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. For more information about the hospital and its research visit: www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom.

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What’s in Windex

What’s in Windex – Water and a Host of Chemicals that I’ve Never Heard of

The SC Johnson Company is running a series of commercials that state their claim of being a family company. The commercial goes on to tout how green they are by disclosing their products ingredients to the public. As a result, I took a look at the companies website and I’ve listed the ingredients of Windex below.

I’m not a chemist, but whatever is in the Windex product my lungs can’t take even the slightest encounter and I can’t tolerate the the smell or fumes and I’ve banned it from use around my house. As a Asthmatic I react negativity to harsh chemicals and this is high on “my stay far away from” list. In fact, Windex is its the one of many cleaning products from the SC Johnson Company that exacerbates my Asthma symptoms in a significantly and harmful way. I have to imagine that it’s not the “cinnamon stick” and powder as portrayed in their series of commercials that I am reacting to.

Here’s what I found on the website:

Windex
Windex® Original Glass Cleaner

A glass cleaner that leaves behind a streak-free shine. It can be used on glass, windows, mirrors and more.

Ingredients:

Water

Carriers: (Enable the delivery of the product to a surface)

Isopropyl Alcohol
Propylene Glycol

Cleaning Agents: Break down dirt and deposits.

2-Hexoxyethanol
Ammonium Hydroxide
Ethanolamine
Polyquart® Ampho 149

Wetting Agent: Helps a formula spread across a surface, making cleaning more efficient.

Disodium Cocoamphodipropionate

Fragrance information will be added soon.

Dye: Provides a pleasing color for a product.

Liquitint® Sky Blue Dye