For everybody who wants to follow up the most recent discussion about allergy promoting effects of vitamin D here is a short summary. The Harvard group basically wrote three articles that were immediately contradicted. The comment on the first article in JACI was by a NIH researcher Continue reading Vitamania
Category Archives: Allergy
Severe flaw in mouse allergy studies
A report in Biospektrum 07.07/13:762 about the production of endotoxin free ovalbumin by a German company now reveals that nearly all commercially available ovalbumin preparations are highly contaminated with endotoxin. Company A included 723, company B 1038, company C 257 and company D 342 EU/mg LPS. As all mice are usually also on a vitamin D supplement diet, recent mouse studies may have produced largely artifacts if both – agonist and antagonist – are included in an uncontrolled manner, yea, yea.
Parascience in nature medicine?
I wonder about the title of a new nature medicine editorial
Breathing easier with breast milk
It is not so much the unwanted analogy to aspiration; the paper simply hasn´t to do anything with breathing. It is a poor narrative of a concomittant NM article repeating many of its prejudices. Although the authors would like to let you belief that they have discovered allergen transfer into breast milk, this is known Continue reading Parascience in nature medicine?
CD1 to CD350
I had to g..gle several times to find a comprehensive list of CD marker. Yes – I could buy this book, retrieve this paper or surf to this web site but I simply need a quick reference for all CD classes. A student here helped me – go for the (printed) Biologends catalogue. Nice to know that Invitrogen has a free online book, yea, yea.
Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange
This Byron quotation is taken from the foreword of Selye “Calciphylaxis” 1962 and may help to introduce the followup story on the question who described for the first time vitamin D as cofactor in the allergic sensitization process. Continue reading Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange
Atopic march to a dead end
“.. or does the theory really have legs?” is the title of a critical editorial in JMCP last month. Although I will co-author a forthcoming paper on allergic rhinitis being a risk factor for later asthma, the situation is far from being understood. “March” implies a command for all to go into one direction which is arguable a poor analogy Continue reading Atopic march to a dead end
A first mouse with asthma?
One of the main reasons that there is not so much progress in asthma and COPD research is a missing good animal model. Despite some caveats such a model could tremendously push a field. A new editorial in the AJRRCCM now believes there could be such a model: Continue reading A first mouse with asthma?
Hey what’s going on here?
This morning I discovered numerous entries in Pubmed by 1948 (and 1949). Seems that the topics were quite the same as in 2008 ;-) a somewhat disturbing fact, yea, yea. Continue reading Hey what’s going on here?
Screening steroid activity
A paper in J Drug Target shows a nice property of a cell line
Eight repeats of the glucocorticoid response element (GRE) were cloned into […] vector, and the resulting recombinant plasmid […] was stably transfected into the 293E cells. The stable and sensitive cell line […] was selected by dexamethasone (DEX) using fluorescent microscopy and fluorescence-activated cell sorting. […] The expression of GFP4 in the cell line was under the control of GRE, up-regulated by DEX treatment and down-regulated by phorbol myristate acetate (PMA).
as it could be nicely used for the steroid activity of any compound.
Forgotten papers: Allergy origins in the gut
Instead of highlighting the best paper in 2007, I decided to nominate now the most under valued paper in 2007. There are so many interesting (and probably highly important) studies that do not get enough initial attention and consecutively fail to enter the high citation track. Here is one of these papers that is as interesting as on the day of publication: Continue reading Forgotten papers: Allergy origins in the gut
Hans Selye: Ancestor of the allergy vitamin hypothesis
I spent a lot of time in libraries verifying bibliographic lists as I expected that somebody else could have had the idea of allergy induction by vitamin D before — in particular when being closer to the introduction of vitamin D supplements. Fortunately Science Magazine now offers a fulltext search of their archives (what is currently not possible with old Nature volumes). I could locate about 70% of the computer hits when searching manually the Science index for vitamin and hayfever. The loss of about one third could be mainly attributed to the fact that extra supplement pages have only occasionally preserved in the libraries that I have visited for this project (Marburg, Berlin, München STABI + TUM, Garching). Text recognition is also limited, so my results may be preliminary.
What I found this afternoon in the library at TUM Garching Continue reading Hans Selye: Ancestor of the allergy vitamin hypothesis
Is hayfever contagious?
At least some researchers believe that hayfever is contagious.
Only last week, however, I found this advertisement in Science (April 18, 1890) – so this is not a very new concept. (there is an old saying that obsolete theories only die with their proponents, ;-) Continue reading Is hayfever contagious?
Rural protection or urban living
A paper in Pediatr Allergy Immunol asks this question – and it is one of the best questions to ask. Given my sceptical view of farm related explanations I find relief here
The negative association between rural living and the risk of atopy during childhood, which is independent of farming practices, implies that it is mainly driven by an urban living effect.
A, then E, then B, then D, and then again E
I have just completed an ultra short letter to JACI on a confusing vitamin D article Continue reading A, then E, then B, then D, and then again E
Endocrine disruptors
This is a topic occasionally popping up (frequently after some spectacular press article) but there doesn´t seem so much systematic research. Only recently I came across an article on plastic additives and surfactants (alkylphenols) that can suppress Th1 development – so is plastic the “Western life style factor”? The only other study that I have heard before is about benzophenone, octylphenol, and tributyltin chloride (TBT).