Air pollution, human health, climate change and you.

Low maternal vitamin E intake during pregnancy is associated with asthma in 5-year-old children. Maternal intake of vitamin D during pregnancy and risk of recurrent wheeze in children at age 3 years. Circulating vitamin D(3) and 25-hydroxyvitamin D in humans: an important tool to define adequate nutritional vitamin D status. Association of vitamin D receptor gene polymorphisms with childhood and adult asthma. Regulatory T cells induced by 1a,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 and mycophenolate mofetil treatment mediate transplantation tolerance.Dihydroxyvitamin D3 enhances the generation of nonspecific suppressor cells while inhibiting the induction of cytotoxic cells in a human MLR. The ''co-benefits'' of reducing air pollution on climate change and human health T he study by Ko et al 1 in this issue of Thorax (see page 780) provides an important new contribution to the growing body of evidence that the severe adverse health effects of air pollution, so well documented in Europe and North America, are also occurring in Asia. Indeed, a recent report by the Health Effects Institute (HEI) surveyed the available published literature on this topic as part of its Public Health and Air Pollution in Asia-Science Access on the Net (PAPA-SAN) study. They found hundreds of published studies showing adverse health effects of air pollution in Asia and summarised the results on the web