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Over the past 25 years, the rates of both obesity and asthma have increased dramatically.  These are related to one another, with a 92% increased risk of asthma in people whose body mass index (BMI) exceeds 30 kg/m 2 . People who do lose weight through bariatric surgery or dietary restriction, tend to show improvement in their bronchial hyperresponsiveness, the major feature of asthma.  The reason for this correlation is not well understood.  IL-33, a intercellular messenger that skews helper T cells towards allergies, is produced by fat cells.  IL33 also induces type 2 and type 3 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2 and ILC3), two more recently identified sets of immune cells in fat and the lungs.  In this month’s issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Everaere and colleagues use mouse models to investigate the roles of innate lymphoid cells in the correlation between asthma and obesity ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(5): 1309-1318 ).  The mice...

Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is an allergic disorder seen in approximately 1 out of 2000 people in the United States.  Young children often present with vomiting and failure to thrive, while older children and adults may have difficulties swallowing, food impaction, or strictures in their esophagus.  Despite increasing awareness and diagnosis, the etiology remains unclear.  Past studies support the role of a subset of Helper T-cells, called TH2 cells, which are also present in many other allergic diseases, including atopic dermatitis (AD).  In fact, approximately half of patients with EoE have AD.  But why is that so? In this month’s issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Venturelli and colleagues investigate the role of abnormal skin barriers in the development of EoE, and, in particular, the role of IL-33, a chemical messenger whose levels are elevated in both EoE and AD ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(5): 1367-1380 ).  They also in...

Chronic Rhinosinusitis is a chronic disease of the sinuses that’s seen in up to 27% of adults in Europe and 14% in the United States.  Grouped in two categories, chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis (CRwNP) and chronic rhinosinusitis without nasal polyposis (CRsNP), chronic rhinosinusitis appears to be mediated by very distinct immune mechanisms.  Interestingly, there are differences in the clinical presentations between ethnic groups as well as in the types and levels of cytokines produced by immune cells.  Wang and colleagues expand upon this prior knowledge by looking at 435 patients with chronic rhinosinusitis, and comparing them to 138 control subjects ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(5): 1344-1353 ) .  They were recruited from six regions covering Europe, Australia, and Asia.  They checked the levels of cytokines, inflammatory mediators and IgE, the antibody mediating allergies, from the mucosa of subjects.  The levels of these parameters wer...

Asthma is an incredibly variable disease with its impact on people and molecular and cellular mechanisms what it does to the lungs and rest of the body.  This month’s issue of JACI features three articles by Zoratti et al ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(4): 1016-1029 ), Pongracic et al ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(4): 1030-1041 ), and Liu et al ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(4): 1042-1050 ), covering asthma among inner city children.  They examine factors that determine the phenotype, severity and disease control, based on data they obtained from the Asthma Phenotypes in the Inner City (APIC) study, which looked at children aged 6 to 17 years and examined them every 2 months for one year.  Even though their techniques are all slightly different, all three analyses determined that allergic inflammation was a very significant contributor to disease.  In addition to rhinitis, pulmonary physiology also influenced severity and ability to control asthma despit...

Allergy to cow’s milk affects roughly one in fifty children, rendering them at risk for potentially deadly allergic reactions as well as for poor nutrition that comes with avoiding cow’s milk. In this month’s issue of JACI, Bunyavanich and colleagues relay the results of their research on how gut bacteria might influence the course of this disease ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(4): 1122-1130 ).  They looked at the stools of 234 milk allergic children ranging in age from 3 to 16 months. They used 16s rRNA sequencing to profile the different types of gut bacteria and followed the children up to age 8 years. They found that among children age 3 to 6 months, bacteria in the Firmicutes phylum and Clostridia class were associated with resolution of milk allergy by age 8 years.  This is consistent with preliminary findings from mouse models that also show that Clostridia have a role in regulating sensitization to food allergens.  However, these bacteria appear to have a v...

They may be called parasites, but we may owe helminth worms a great deal of appreciation.  At least, that’s what Dr Maizels and McSorley write in this month’s issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(3): 666-675 ).  To those who are unaware, there are only about a dozen or so species of helminths that commonly infect human beings, but they affect more than 2 billion people worldwide.  Their wide prevalence is a testament to the fact that they can evade host defenses and establish niches from themselves within our bodies.  Learning about how they do this can provide valuable insights about how our immune system works. They do this through many different ways.  T-cells from helminth-infected asymptomatic humans show an increase in IL-4, IL-10, and TGF-beta over IL-17 and Interferon-gamma, suggesting that parasites skew our T-cells in a way that reduces the immune system’s ability to clear helminths.  In partic...

Childhood asthma affects over 6 million children in the United States.  In addition to its effects on physical health, asthma has an impact on academic and personal development.  Asthma related absences lead to decreased reading proficiency and increased learning disabilities.  In this month’s issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Lemanske and colleagues describe the creation of a central resource, termed SAMPRO (School-based Asthma Management Program). ( J Allergy Clin Immunol 2016; 138(3): 711-723 ). The SAMPRO workforce identified four components for development and implementation: (1) a circle of support facilitating communication, (2) asthma management plans, (3) comprehensive education plan, and (4) assessment of school environment.  The circle of support is comprised of persons involved in taking care of children, including family, school personnel, clinicians, and community members.  School nurses in particular are pivotal in helping t...