BACKGROUND Nasal allergen challenge (NAC) is useful to study the pathophysiology of rhinitis, and multiple challenges may more adequately approximate natural exposure. OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of 4 consecutive daily NAC, on clinical and inflammatory parameters in rhinitics with or without asthma. METHODS Rhinitic subjects were recruited: 19 with mild asthma and 13 without asthma. S...

OBJECTIVE To examine the relation between mouse allergen exposure and asthma in Puerto Rican children. METHODS Mus m 1, Der p 1, Bla g 2, and Fel d 1 allergens were measured in dust samples from homes of Puerto Rican children with (cases) and without (controls) asthma in Hartford, CT (n = 449) and San Juan (SJ), Puerto Rico (n = 678). Linear or logistic regression was used for the multivariat...

BACKGROUND The relationship between mite and pet allergen exposure in infancy and the subsequent development of sensitization and asthma is complex. OBJECTIVE We prospectively investigated the effect of allergen exposure at 3 months of age on the development of sensitization, wheeze, and physician-diagnosed asthma in the first 4 years of life in a birth cohort of children with and without an ...

BACKGROUND Airway wall remodelling and inflammation are features of chronic asthma. Transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) has been implicated in these processes. AIM To determine the effect of allergen challenge on airway inflammation and remodelling and whether TGF-beta isoforms and the Smad signalling pathways are involved. METHODS Thirteen patients with atopic asthma underwent inhal...

INTRODUCTION The natural course of asthma is unpredictable and appears to be unaffected by any therapeutic strategy. Under such circumstances, the attention must be focused on the opportunities for prevention of a disease which is chronic, life long and incurable, even thought it can be very effectively controlled. During the past decades, a lot of a studies have been performed and started, in ...

Chenopodium album is a weedy annual plant in the genus Chenopodium. C. album pollen represents a predominant allergen source in Iran. The main C. album pollen allergens have been described as Che a 1, Che a 2, and Che a 3. The aim of this work was to clone the Che a 1 in Escherichia coli to establish a system for overproduction of the recombinant Che a 1 (rChe a 1). In order to clone this aller...

Exposure to indoor allergens is associated with asthma, but there is no standardized sampling method for measuring allergens. We compared the association of measured allergen exposure and serum-specific IgE levels and the precision of three sampling methods (Cyclone, Mighty Mite, and Readivac II) to identify a standardized sampling method for indoor allergens. A random sample of 72 children, 5 ...

Patients with bronchial asthma develop various types of asthmatic response to bronchial challenge with allergen, such as immediate/early asthmatic response (IAR), late asthmatic response (LAR) or delayed asthmatic response (DYAR), because of different immunologic mechanisms. The DYAR, occurring between 24 and 56 hours after the bronchial allergen challenge (p < 0.01), differs from IAR and LAR i...

Allergic diseases, such as allergic asthma, allergic rhinitis and atopic eczema, are a major health problem world-wide, affecting up to 30% of the population. A large proportion of the patients are allergic to indoor allergens, such as mite and cat allergens, which are airborne and thus cause symptoms in the airways upon inhalation. Hundreds of single allergens from different sources have been ...

Asthma is a chronic disease of the respiratory tract, characterized by variable degrees of airflow obstruction, and is associated with airway inflammation, airway remodeling and airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) (O’Byrne and Inman, 2003). The initiation and persistence of various aspects of asthma can often be attributed to exposure to one or more allergens (Pomes, 2002). Inhaled allergens are c...