Es ist nicht einfach, hier einen Überblick zu bekommen.
Jedenfalls sollte man von Qualität der Wettervorhersagen (die für die nächsten 24 Stunden von 75% auf über 90% in den letzten 20 Jahren gestiegen ist), nicht auf die Qualität der Klimavorhersagen schliessen.
Die Geschichte der Klimaforschung kann jedenfalls in vier Beiträgen lückenlos nachgelesen werden:
Oder doch nicht, wenn man sich “chasing ice” auf Youtube ansieht?
Urs Bruderer hat diese Frage in einem wunderbaren Essay über “Die große Überforderung” thematisiert
Ich habe die Klimakatastrophe viele Jahre kaum beachtet. Und hielt das für die klügste Entscheidung.
Seit Menschen denken können, warnen sie vor ihrem Ende.
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Ob der Atomkrieg, das Waldsterben oder das Auslaufen des Maya-Kalenders im Dezember 2012, ob im Cern produzierte schwarze Löcher, Milleniumsbug oder Vogelgrippe – im Rückblick bewies jedes Weltuntergangsszenario nur, dass wir eine Lust an der Angst vor dem Ende haben.
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Der Weltklimarat hat inzwischen unzählige Berichte und Sonderberichte veröentlicht. Die Warnungen wurden immer genauer und bedrohlicher. Und ich wurde immer besser darin, sie zu überhören.
Einen Artikel, den man vollständig gelesen haben muss.
Air pollution and climate change are potential drivers for the increasing burden of allergic diseases. The molecular mechanisms by which air pollutants and climate parameters may influence allergic diseases, however, are complex and elusive.
There is no causal effect of allergens on human allergy, as allergens have been always abundant even without allergy. Nevertheless allergens are drivers aggravating symptoms in allergy-prone patients by basically four factors
Stability effects; influencing the accumulation and degradation of allergenic proteins, the duration of exposure times to cellular receptors, and the process of antigen presentation via major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II
Epitope effects, i.e., generation of new epitopes or modification of existing epitopes, changing the binding properties of antibodies and receptors, by direct chemical modification or as a result of conformational changes
Adjuvant effects, i.e., generation of new adjuvant functions or modification of existing adjuvant functions such as lipid-binding capacities due to modified ligand binding sites
Agglomeration effects, i.e., multiplication or shielding of epitopes or adjuvant functions by cross-linking (oligomerization) of allergenic proteins, which may enhance the cross-linking
A new paper by a British-Kazakhstan-Armenian group nicely summarizes why we need good hypothesis papers.
As a deterring example they use the hygiene hypothesis
the hygiene hypothesis that was originally proposed by David Strachan in 1989. David Strachan studied the epidemiology of hay fever in a cohort of 17,414 British children and concluded that declining family size and improved personal hygiene had reduced the chances of cross infections in families, resulting in epidemics of atopic disease in post-industrial Britain. Over the past four decades, several related hypotheses have been proposed to expand the potential role of symbiotic microorganisms and parasites in the development of human physiological immune responses early in life and protection from allergic and autoimmune diseases later on.
I agree with the description although David never claimed to be the first author writing about the hygiene hypothesis. When I spoke to him the last time London he wasn’t even happy with this popularity.
The chain certainly started also much earlier than 1989 with “continuing activity of an immune system made redundant by man’s cleanliness” (Godfrey, 1975) continued with Gerrard 1976, Frick 1986, Busse, 1989 until David Barker argued in 1985 that there is a “decreased incidence of infection among children, especially in wealthier families, that changed their pattern of immunity”.
The harm inducted by the hygiene hypothesis is described as
The misunderstanding of the hygiene hypothesis that primarily aimed to shed light on the role of the microbiome in allergic and autoimmune diseases resulted in decline of public confidence in hygiene with dire societal implications, forcing some experts to abandon the original idea. Although that hypothesis is unrelated to the issue of vaccinations, the public misunderstanding has resulted in decline of vaccinations at a time of upsurge of old and new infections.
I fear the authors are right – some people may have been harmed by the hygiene hypothesis leading them back in the pre-Semmelweis era.
The slide builders at the plugin page are quite useless except for slides.com which is, however, too expensive.
I therefore design everything in Keynote, export as jpg and loop over all jpgs to write the section tags.
The best option would certainly be if Apple would directly support reveal.js and not some fancy own HTML formats
Sci Immunol today shows an incomplete genetic reconstitution of B cell pools after measles infection.
Using B cell receptor (BCR) sequencing of human peripheral blood lymphocytes before and after MeV infection, we identified two immunological con- sequences from measles underlying immunosuppression: (i) incomplete reconstitution of the naïve B cell pool leading to immunological immaturity and (ii) compromised immune memory to previously encountered pathogens due to depletion of previously expanded B memory clones.
Pooled odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval of individual studies and pooled data for the association between TaqI polymorphism and asthma risk in overall populations and B for tt vs. TTof the TaqI variant.
We are in line #1…
Another nice paper on a genetic interaction is Vimaleswaran et al.
A new study by Urashima et al. shows that sensitization to cow’s milk and food allergy, including CMA and anaphylaxis, is preventable by avoiding CMF (cow milk formula) supplementation for at least the first few days of life. Although examined only indirectly in this study, vitamin D supplementation seems to be involved in the sensitization process.
Note to self – here is a list of all vitamin D / allergy related clinical trials following the first case report was Moneret-Vautrin DA, Hatahet R, Kanny G, Ait-Djafer Z. Allergenic peanut oil in milk formulas. The Lancet 1991; 338: 1149. doi: 10.1016/0140-6736(91)92008-p.
1. De Montis G, Gendrel D, Chemillier-Truong M, Dupont C. Sensitisation to peanut and vitamin D oily preparations. The Lancet 1993; 341: 1411. doi: 10.1016/0140-6736(93)90976-N.
2. De Montis G, Gendrel D, Chemillier-Truong M, Dupont C. [Peanut sensitization and oily solution vitamin preparations]. Arch Pediatr 1995;2(1):25-8. doi: 10.1016/0929-693x(96)89804-6.
3. Rueter K, Jones AP, Siafarikas A, Lim EM, Bear N, Noakes PS, et al. Direct infant UV light exposure is associated with eczema and immune development. J Allergy Clin Immunol 2018; in press, doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2018.08.037.
4. Rosendahl J, Pelkonen AS, Helve O, et al. High-Dose Vitamin D Supplementation Does Not Prevent Allergic Sensitization of Infants. J Pediatr. 2019 Jun;209:139-145.e1. doi: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2019.02.021
There is currently a lack of consensus among national allergy societies .. Although the EAACI3 and American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAI) currently recommend the use of hypoallergenic formulas in infants at high risk of allergy, the Australian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy does not. The EAACI and the AAAI are likely to reconsider their guidelines because results of more re- cent studies have been contradictory. … Guidelines in the United States and United Kingdom recommend routine vitamin D supplementation in all breastfed infants, whereas guidelines in Australia recommend supplementation only in breastfed infants at high risk of vitamin D insufficiency.
Vitamine sind die am häufigsten verschriebene Pharmaka, wobei unklar ist, warum in machen Regionen 74% und in andern nur 5% Vitamine verschreiben. Wenn es generall notwendig wäre, warum dann nicht 100%? Und wenn es nicht notwendig ist, warum dann nicht 0%?
Together with many other colleagues I was astonished about the Nestle booth at EAACI / PAAM 2019 conference in Florence.
The advertisement of Nestle for the NAN HA formula (“state-of-the-art routine infant formula“, „proven to reduce the risk of atopic dermatitis“, „long term effects up to 15 years of age“) along with other milk marketing violates recommendations of the WHO and other medical organisations about breast-feeding. None of the claims made is justified from a scientific viewpoint.
Having paid 650 € entry fee for a 3 day conference, it is also not acceptable that Dr Antonella Muraro (Padua) explains in Symposium 9 “Special products for cow’s milk allergy“ that if Nestle would not be sponsoring the event, the congress fees would be even higher.
At present, there is no generally accepted benefit of any baby food on long-term allergy prevention while also the therapeutic benefit is questionable. Commercial baby food may even increase later allergy by including supplements that are itself allergenic.
We therefore recommend a review of the EAACI ethics guidelines of industry sponsorship, and an immediate action against further participation of Nestle at future EAACI allergy congresses.
Asthma and atopy were inversely associated with presence of a farm within a radius of maximum 100m.
wich refers to their FIG 3
FIG 3 (click for zoom) Original legend: Number of farms within a given radius was dichotomized for at least one farm in the radius versus no farms. Associations are calculated by logistic regression resulting in odds ratios (OR) with 95%- confidence intervals.
The authors probably want to say that a non farm child that lives within a smaller distance to a farm shows a stronger negative association. Unfortunately it is not clear from the methods how the categories have been exactly defined, including or excluding category borders? And why is the highest category of 1.000-10.000 excluded here? There is a negative association with asthma in ALL strata irrespective of distance – what is the reference? The increased atopy risk by a farm in a circle with 1.000m radius is never discussed. BTW I am also quite sure that this plot has been produced with some kind of drawing software and not with “R version 3.2.3” if you zoom into the picture.
For whatever reason the authors abandon the distance definition above in favor of some data-derived classification afterwards. Why?
[1] children living on a farm currently run by the family [2] children not living on a farm, but with regular contact to farms, meaning at least once a week for a period of 6 months minimum and [3] children without any contact to farms.
I have no idea what regular contact is. But lets have a look on FIG 2
FIG 2: also misaligned and implausible Original legend: Distribution of environmental variables across exposure strata 1 = farm children, 2 = exposed non-farm children, 3 = non exposed non-farm children. Differences between the subgroups were statistically significant (p<0.01) except for ozone, altitude and distance to the next farm.
This is also not a facet_warp() as I would expect from a R analysis but some manually cut & pasted figures where P<0.01 is contradicting the methods. FIG 2.9 basically says that the distance to the next farm is not different in groups of “farm exposure”.
The abstract
The environmental variables greenness, tree cover, soil sealing, altitude, air pollution differed not only between farm and non-farm children, but also between farm children with and without another farm nearby.
is therefore wrong (it maybe even trivial as farms of course have less soil sealing than villages). In any case, we are now trapped in a loop as according to Fig 1 the prevalence of asthma and atopy over the exposure strata should have been different.
Keine Frage, die Lebensbedingungen auf Bauernhöfen sind anders. Mehr Tiere, mehr Dreck, mehr frische Luft, vieles ist anders als in der Großstadt. Dass es hier auch weniger Allergien gibt, wird wohl an den Bedingungen liegen, die bereits an einer der ersten Studien vor 30 Jahren zu sehen waren.
Clin Exp Allergy. 1999 Jan;29(1):28-34. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(01)06252-3 Hier nicht relevante Daten ausgegraut
Auch die Eltern hatten schon weniger Allergien. Der “protektive” Effekt kann also einfach dadurch erklärt werden, dass mit weniger Eltern als “Risikofaktor” auch weniger Kinder Allergien haben. Und warum die Eltern wohl weniger Allergien haben? Nun ja, mit Heuschnupfen wird man nicht gern im Heu arbeiten wollen. Auch das zeigen Studien ziemlich eindeutig.
Wenn man genau hinschaut, dann haben alle Bauernhofstudien immer wieder dieselbe Argumentationsstruktur: weil die Bedingung X dort so ist, dann kann die Folge Y auch auf die Bedingung X zurückgeführt werden. Allerdings machen immer mehr Beschreibungen von X die Story nicht glaubwürdiger. Keine der jemals beschriebenen Bedingungen X, ist aus der Bauernhofsituation auf eine allgemeine Situation übertragbar gewesen, von einem einzigen verunglückten Versuch abgesehen.
Hier die Story mal erläutert an einem simulierten Datensatz – eine normal verteilte Allergiehäufigkeit und normal verteilte Endotoxinwerten. Zwischen beiden Variablen gibt es keine Korrelation.
Ausgangssituation: Jedes 10. Kind hat eine Allergie. Es gibt keine Korrelation zwischen Allergiehäufigkeit und Endotoxin.Wir beginnen nun eine Studie im ländlichen Raum (dunkelgrün) und sind dabei vor allem an den Bauernhöfen interessiert (hellgrün), also nur der Region mit hoher Endotoxinbelastung.Hier läuft aber schon seit längerem eine Wanderungsbewegung. Wer Heuschnupfen hat, wird nicht Heu machen können..Somit fallen in dem oberen rechten Quadranten Allergiker weg und verteilen sich im dunkelgrünen oder grauen Bereich. Müssen nicht viele sein, 30% weniger reichen schon.Wenn wir nun erneut eine Regressionsgleichung aufstellen, so gibt es eine negative Assoziation im ländlichen Bereich (kurze Linie) während in der Bevölkerung insgesamt die Verschiebung nicht besonders in das Gewicht fällt (lange Linie).
Das ist nun genau das Ergebnis der Bauernhofstudien.
Natürlich kann ein hoher Endotoxin Spiegel auf den Bauernhöfen eine bestimmte Wirkung haben – zumindest bei einigen Menschen und bei einigen Mäusen – aber mehr ist nach aktuellem Kenntnisstand auch sehr unwahrscheinlich.
Da die Lebensbedingungen auf dem Bauernhof angeblich protektiv sind, müsste es eigentlich Kinder geben, die eine Allergie haben sollten (zB wenn beide Eltern allergisch sind) aber nun doch keine Allergien bekommen haben. Solche Kinder gibt es aber nicht…
