Maternal diet, asthma guidelines among latest news in women’s allergy/asthma health

Healio’s Women in Allergy initiative aims to advance the work of women in the field of allergy while also providing essential insights into how allergy and asthma concerns can affect women’s health.

The articles below recap the latest news and research within women’s allergy/asthma health, including treatment guidelines during pregnancy, the impact of eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorders, and how diet during pregnancy can impact offspring outcomes.

Asthma treatment guidelines aim to provide ‘best possible care’ for pregnant patients

While attending a conference in Canada, Sarah A. Bendien, MD, a respiratory physician at Haga Teaching Hospital in The Hague, Netherlands, realized the way asthma and pregnancy care were organized in her home country was not ideal. This inspired her to open a specialized asthma-pregnancy outpatient clinic with providers from multiple specialties working together at her teaching hospital.

In her most recent publication in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, Bendien and colleagues provided recommendations for treating pregnant women with asthma, including preconception counseling, medication safety practices and more. Read more.

Asthma symptoms during pregnancy may be linked to low omega-3, high omega-6 levels

Pregnant women from an ethnically diverse cohort with a disproportionately higher asthma burden appeared to have high dietary omega-6 and low omega-3, according to study results. Najla N. Abdurrahman, MD, fellow in the division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, presented the findings in a poster at the American Thoracic Society International Conference.

“It was important for us to be able to look at this population in particular,” Abdurrahman told Healio. “We know from prior studies that members of economically disadvantaged groups tend to consume a less nutritional diet due to factors such as food deserts and the high cost of healthy foods. This diet tend tends to be lower in omega-3 and higher in omega-6 fatty acids.” Read more.

Researcher seeks to better understand how eosinophilic GI disorders impact women’s health

Improving understanding of eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorders and their impact on women’s health and pregnancy has personal roots for Jenny Huang, MD, because a few years ago, she was diagnosed with eosinophilic gastritis.

Because the disease course of eosinophilic esophagitis during pregnancy is not well understood, Huang and her colleague, Andrew A. White, MD, of the division of allergy, asthma and immunology at Scripps Clinic, sought to characterize the symptoms and treatment of patients with EoE before, during and after pregnancy, in a study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. Read more.

Q&A: Pregnant women remain at higher risk for complications from COVID-19

At the start of the pandemic, there were no data to show whether asthma put pregnant women at higher risk for complications from COVID-19, according to a review published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.

However, there are now increasing data demonstrating the efficacy and safety of vaccines among pregnant women. Healio spoke with S. Shahzad Mustafa, MD, lead physician of allergy, immunology and rheumatology at Rochester Regional Health and clinical associate professor of medicine at University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, to learn more about the impact of COVID-19 on pregnancy and its interrelationships with asthma and allergy. Read more.

E-consults could make penicillin allergy delabeling more accessible for pregnant patients

Electronic consults with allergists helped pregnant women with reported penicillin allergy be evaluated and delabeled before delivery, according to a poster presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting.

Nonie Arora, MD, MBA, an allergy/immunology fellow at University of North Carolina, said the study was a follow-up to a previous study conducted by her colleague and mentor, Mildred Kwan, MD, PhD, FAAAAI, associate professor of medicine in the division of rheumatology, allergy and immunology at University of North Carolina. Arora and her colleagues evaluated the efficacy of using e-consults to assess penicillin allergy among pregnant patients. Read more.

Diets during pregnancy associated with asthma risks at age 6 years

Maternal diets were associated with risks for active asthma among children at age 6 years, according to a presentation at the American Thoracic Society International Conference.

“Asthma often presents early in life,” Lourdes G. Ramirez, MD, MS, fellow in allergy and clinical immunology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said during her presentation. “Its early onset indicates that prenatal and early life exposures play important roles in the development of asthma.” Read more.

Vegetarian diets during pregnancy linked with less atopic dermatitis in children

Vegetarian diets during pregnancy were associated with reduced risks for atopic dermatitis among children, according to a study published in Pediatric Allergy and Immunology.

Yi-Chun Su, department of public health, Tzu Chi University, and colleagues examined data from 4,488 mothers in the Taiwan Birth Cohort Study who gave birth in 2005. The researchers surveyed participants when their infants were aged 6 and 18 months. Read more.