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You are more than just one human being.  That may sound like an inspirational quote, but it’s actually a scientific fact: there are literally millions of bacteria living on, in, and around you that play crucial roles in the ways that your body and your mind work.  And now, thanks to newer technology, we have the ability to see how these ‘old friends’ – bacteria have likely been around since the emergence of humans – interact with our own cells to change how our immune system works. In this month’s issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Garn and colleagues provide an overview of how these microbes influence our metabolism and can lead to inflammation, based on the insights from the International von-Behring-Röntgen-Symposium ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(1): 47-56 ) .  While our knowledge of the microbiome keeps on growing, the fact is that there remains so much to be researched.  For example, how does our modern age of hygiene, where we have el...

C-O-P-D (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is a series of four letters that strikes terror in the hearts (and lungs) of millions throughout the world.  It’s a condition in which there is chronic inflammation within the lungs that leads to their destruction, causing problems in breathing.While the consequences of COPD have been long known, the immunology behind it is still largely unknown.  In this month’s issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Dr. Barnes reviews the inflammatory mechanisms behind COPD ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(1): 16-27 ) .   As he mentions, one of the difficulties behind figuring out how immune dysfunction causes COPD is that COPD doesn’t seem to be a single disease.  Different types of immune cells and mediators seem to be involved in different ways in different patients, and our knowledge continues to grow about how we can tease apart all these endotypes and phenotypes. However, some common themes are emerging....

It’s not surprising that expecting mothers carry a lot of weight in their bellies.  But they also carry a lot of weight on their shoulders.  What to do, and what not to do, complicates nearly every decision when there’s a second person to think about, even the relatively minor act of using a nasal steroid spray to treat allergic rhinitis.  Fortunately for them, Dr. Berard and colleagues conducted a study to help address these concerns ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(1): 97-104 ). They looked at nearly 300,000 pregnancies in Montreal between 1998 and 2008 to find pregnant women who took intranasal triamcinolone as well as other intranasal steroids.  They then looked at the number of major abnormalities at birth, spontaneous loss of pregnancies, and underweight newborns, and compared the rates to those who did not use intranasal triamcinolone.  For the most part, the results are comforting.  They suggest that there is no link between using intranasal triam...