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Hello, neffy: FDA approves first nasal spray for severe allergic reactions – Endpoints News
The FDA approved the nasal spray, to be known as neffy, on Friday to treat anaphylaxis in adults and children who are at least 66 pounds. It’s the first time ever that the FDA has approved a non-injectable epinephrine product, the agency said. The approval was based on data from four studies in healthy adults showing that neffy produced similar levels of epinephrine in the blood as injectable counterparts.
Another Person’s Peril: Peanut Allergy, Risk Perceptions, and Responsible Sociality - Michaela DeSoucey, Miranda R. Waggoner, 2022
This article examines perceptions of health risk when some individuals within a shared space are in heightened danger but anyone, including unaffected others, can be a vector of risk. Using the case of peanut allergy and drawing on qualitative content analysis of the public comments submitted in response to an unsuccessful 2010 U.S. Department of Transportation proposal to prohibit peanuts on airplanes, we analyze contention over the boundaries of responsibility for mitigating exposure to risk. We find three key dimensions of proximity to risk (material, social, and situational) characterizing ardent claims both for and against policy enactment. These proximity concerns underlay commenters’ sensemaking about fear, trust, rights, moral obligations, and liberty in the act of sharing space with others, while allowing them to stake positions on what we call “responsible sociality”—an ethic of discernible empathy for proximate others and of consideration for public benefit in social and communal settings. We conclude by discussing the insights our case affords several other areas of scholarship attentive to the intractable yet timely question of “for whom do we care?”
Origins of peanut allergy-causing antibodies | Science
Although seemingly innocuous, food allergens may influence the gut environment to generate conditions that induce CSR to IgE. In this regard, allergenic foods may have properties that induce allergic inflammation, as has been proposed (11, 12). Understanding the influences of the gut microbiota, age of exposure, and environment on the regulation of allergic responses to food (13, 14) promises to provide clues to elucidating how IgE CSR is regulated.
Why the world is becoming more allergic to food - BBC News
But it is thought that eating trigger foods during weaning can lead to a healthy response and prevent the allergy developing, because the gut's immune system is prepared to tolerate bacteria and foreign substances, such as food.
This was the basis for King's College London's LEAP Study, which showed about an 80% reduction in peanut allergy in five-year-old children who regularly ate peanut from the year they were born.
New peanut allergy treatment shows effectiveness and safety -- ScienceDaily
In 2011, Kim and colleagues -- including Wesley Burks, MD, dean of the UNC School of Medicine -- conducted a small study of 18 patients to show that SLIT was safe and effective over the course of one year. Since then, Kim and colleagues followed 48 patients in the SLIT protocol of 2 mg daily for five years. In the JACI paper, the researchers showed that 67 percent of these patients were able to tolerate at least 750 mg of peanut protein without serious side effects. About 25 percent could tolerate 5000 mg.
Kim's data shows SLIT was about as effective as OIT, though the SLIT study was much smaller. And SLIT posed much less risk of serious side effects. The most common side effect was itchiness around the mouth that lasted about 15 minutes and did not need treatment. No one left the multi-year study because of side effects.
"SLIT participants tolerated between 10 and 20 times more peanut protein than it would take for someone to get sick," Kim said. "We think this provides a good cushion of protection -- maybe not quite as good as OIT -- but with an easier mechanism (sublingually) and, as far as we can tell right now, a better safety signal."
New therapy targets gut bacteria to prevent and reverse food allergies -- ScienceDaily
Recent insights about the microbiome -- the complex ecosystem of microorganisms that live in the gut and other body sites -- have suggested that an altered gut microbiome may play a pivotal role in the development of food allergies. A new study, led by investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Boston Children's Hospital, identifies the species of bacteria in the human infant gut that protect against food allergies, finding changes associated with the development of food allergies and an altered immune response. In preclinical studies in a mouse model of food allergy, the team found that giving an enriched oral formulation of five or six species of bacteria found in the human gut protected against food allergies and reversed established disease by reinforcing tolerance of food allergens. The team's results are published in Nature Medicine.
Researchers develop first functional targeted inhibitors of peanut allergens -- ScienceDaily
To achieve their goal, Bilgicer and his team used nanoparticles, called nanoallergens, to screen and identify the key binding sites on peanut proteins that patient IgE antibodies recognize by studying samples from a small population of patients with severe allergies to peanuts. That was significant, Bilgicer said, because "it seems only a few sites seem to be exceptionally critical in driving the allergic response." Once identified, Bilgicer's team synthesized a specialized inhibitor, called covalent heterobivalent inhibitor (cHBI), to prevent IgE from binding to the peanut protein. In a study of 16 patient samples with severe peanut allergies, the cHBIs were successful in inhibiting an allergic response in up to 90 percent of all samples.
The study presents a compelling case for further development and assessment of cHBI as a viable strategy for treating peanut allergies.
Inactive ingredients in pills and capsules may cause allergic, adverse reactions: Majority of oral medications available to consumers contain ingredients that can affect sensitive individuals -- ScienceDaily
A new study led by a team of investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found that the vast majority of the most frequently prescribed medications in the U.S. contain at least one ingredient capable of causing an adverse reaction. Known as inactive ingredients, these components are added to improve the taste, shelf-life, absorption and other characteristics of a pill, but the authors found that more than 90 percent of all oral medications tested contained at least one ingredient that can cause allergic or gastrointestinal symptoms in sensitive individuals. Such ingredients include lactose, peanut oil, gluten and chemical dyes.
Immunotherapy for egg allergy may allow patients to eat egg safely long after treatment -- ScienceDaily
"Egg allergy is one of the most common food allergies and usually appears in early childhood. It has significant risk for severe allergic reactions and negatively affects quality of life for children with the allergy," said Kim, assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at the UNC School of Medicine and director of the UNC Food Allergy Initiative. "While the allergy does seem to go away with age, it can last into the second decade of life for most people. Any treatment that can allow the introduction of egg into the diet of someone with egg allergy provides nutritional benefits and peace of mind for the patient and their family."
Birch pollen allergen immunotherapy normalizes nasal gene-expression and microbial community -- ScienceDaily
In total, 44 nasal brushings were subjected to RNA-sequencing analysis to find gene expression and microbial community changes driven by allergic rhinitis and allergen immunotherapy.
According to the results, the group who started allergen immunotherapy showed decreased symptom score and reprogramming of nasal epithelial transcriptome, set of RNA molecules, during the pollen season.
"The immunotherapy affected asthma-, chemokine signaling-, and toll like receptor signaling pathways in the spring. No major differential expression was found between the two winters in any group," says researcher Sanna Toppila-Salmi from the University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital.
The results also indicated that microbial community diversity of the group that underwent allergen immunotherapy approached that of the healthy controls.
Two types of drugs you may want to avoid for the sake of your brain - Harvard Health
Taking an anticholinergic for the equivalent of three years or more was associated with a 54% higher dementia risk than taking the same dose for three months or less.
Frontiers | Increased Risk of Psychiatric Disorders in Allergic Diseases: A Nationwide, Population-Based, Cohort Study | Psychiatry
Of the study subjects, 5,038 (10.8%) developed psychiatric disorders when compared to 9,376 (6.7%) in the control group, with significant difference (p < 0.001). Fine and Gray’s competing risk model analysis revealed that the adjusted HR was 1.659 (95% CI = 1.602–1.717, p < 0.001). In this study, we found that the groups of atopic dermatitis alone and the allergic rhinitis + atopic dermatitis were associated with a lower risk of psychiatric disorders, but all the other four groups, such as bronchial asthma alone, allergic rhinitis alone, bronchial asthma + allergic rhinitis, bronchial asthma + atopic dermatitis, and the combination of all these three allergic diseases, were associated with a higher risk of psychiatric disorders.
Grape-derived compounds may promote resilience against depression, researchers find: New study used DNA epigenetic mapping to analyze novel inflammatory mechanisms influencing brain circuitry associated with depression -- ScienceDaily
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year approximately 16 million individuals in the United States have a major depressive episode. Conventional pharmacological treatments are estimated to produce temporary remission in less than 50 percent of patients, and they are often associated with severe adverse effects. Thus, there is an urgent need for a wider spectrum of novel therapeutics.
Depression is associated with a multitude of pathological processes, including inflammation of the peripheral immune system, a set of biological structures and processes in the lymph nodes and other tissues that protect against disease and abnormalities involving synapses, the structures that permit neurons to pass an electrical or chemical signal to other neurons. However, currently available antidepressants are largely restricted to targeting the systems that regulate serotonin, dopamine, and other related neurotransmitters, and these treatments do not specifically address inflammation and synaptic maladaptations that are now known to be associated with MDD.
Previous research has found that grape-derived polyphenols have some efficacy in modulating aspects of depression, yet the mechanisms of action had largely remained unknown until now. The new study, led by Giulio Maria Pasinetti, PhD, Saunders Professor of Neurology, and a team of investigators from the Center for Integrative Molecular Neuroresilience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, found that a bioactive dietary polyphenol preparation -- a combination of three grape-derived polyphenol products, including a select Concord grape juice, a select grape seed extract, and trans-resveratrol -- was effective in promoting resilience against stress-induced depression in mice.
Specifically, researchers found that DHCA and Mal-gluc can promote resilience in mouse models of depression by modulating inflammation and synaptic plasticity, respectively. DHCA reduces interleukin 6 (IL-6), a pro-inflammatory substance secreted by T cells and macrophages to stimulate immune response, by epigenetically modulating the non-coding sequence of the IL-6 gene. Mal-gluc modulates histone acetylation of the Rac1 gene and allows transcription activators to access the DNA for increased transcription in the brain, which influences the expression of genes responsible for synaptic plasticity. Researchers also demonstrated that DHCA/Mal-gluc treatment was effective in attenuating depression-like phenotypes in a mouse model of increased systemic inflammation induced by transplantation of cells from the bone marrow of stress-susceptible mice.
Fasting mitigates immediate hypersensitivity: a pivotal role of endogenous D-beta-hydroxybutyrate
The results of the present study demonstrates that fasting suppress hypersensitivity reaction, and indicate that increased level of D-beta-hydroxybutyrate by fasting plays an important role, via the stabilization of mast cells, in suppression of hypersensitivity reaction.
Food allergies linked to childhood anxiety -- ScienceDaily
Among the children with a food allergy, 57 percent reported having symptoms of anxiety compared to 48 percent of children without a food allergy. Approximately 48 percent of the children had symptoms of depression with or without a food allergy.
"Management of food allergy can be expensive both in terms of food shopping, meal preparation, and the cost of epinephrine auto-injectors, which expire annually," said Renee Goodwin, PhD, in the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health and lead author. "These demands could result in higher levels of anxiety for those with fewer financial resources and further heighten anxiety symptoms in children and their caregivers."
The results suggest that food allergy is particularly linked to elevated social anxiety and fear of social rejection and humiliation.
Scientists just got a step closer to creating a universal allergy treatment - ScienceAlert
They developed dissolvable nanoparticles out of an FDA-approved polymer, and then filled them with egg protein, before injecting them into mice that were allergic to eggs.
Usually, these mice would develop an asthma-like response, but because the egg protein was safely stored inside the friend-looking nanoparticles, their bodies didn't react.
Even better, the nanoparticles were then cleaned up by macrophages, which are tasked with 'vacuuming up' any debris in the blood stream. And these macrophages are part of the innate immune system, which meant that the allergens were then processed as normal.
"The vacuum-cleaner cell presents the allergen or antigen to the immune system in a way that says, 'No worries, this belongs here,'" said Miller. The immune system then shuts down its attack on that allergen, and gets reset to normal.
Immuno-psychiatry: When your body makes its own 'angel dust' -- ScienceDaily
"The atypical psychosis syndromes arising from the development of anti-NMDA receptor antibodies are extremely important to diagnosis and treat," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "They may be easily misdiagnosed as the psychiatric disorders that they superficially resemble.. Nonetheless, these syndromes highlight the importance of NMDA receptor signaling for the genesis of symptoms associated with psychotic disorders."
Is depression a kind of allergic reaction?
Both cytokines and inflammation have been shown to rocket during depressive episodes, and – in people with bipolar – to drop off in periods of remission. Healthy people can also be temporarily put into a depressed, anxious state when given a vaccine that causes a spike in inflammation. Brain imaging studies of people injected with a typhoid vaccine found that this might be down to changes in the parts of the brain that process reward and punishment.
There are other clues, too: people with inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis tend to suffer more than average with depression; cancer patients given a drug called interferon alpha, which boosts their inflammatory response to help fight the cancer, often become depressed as a side-effect.
Protein from bacteria alleviates food allergy symptoms -- ScienceDaily
Lactobacillus might sound familiar when the topic of probiotics comes up, but they are only one of many types of bacteria that have proven health benefits. In a new study by the Academy for Immunology and Microbiology within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and the National Institute of Animal Science research project of Rural Development Administration, researchers have shown that the introduction of the probiotic Bifidobacterium longum KACC 91563 has the ability to reduce the effects of food allergies.
Infection with roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) is associated with earlier first births and shortened interbirth intervals, whereas infection with hookworm is associated with delayed first pregnancy and extended interbirth intervals. Thus, helminths may have important effects on human fertility that reflect physiological and immunological consequences of infection.
