Allergy/Asthma

Children who were hospitalized for asthma exacerbations and were prescribed azithromycin did not have shorter lengths of stay or a decreased risk for adverse events compared with children who received a placebo, according to findings of a randomized clinical trial presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting.

The Peanut Allergen immunotherapy, Clarifying the Evidence, or PACE, study found that existing peanut oral immunotherapy considerably increased allergic and anaphylactic reactions despite inducing desensitization.

A recent study in The Journal of Urban Health found that approximately 20% of New York City teenagers had asthma symptoms but had not received an asthma diagnosis.

The phone call came while I was celebrating Christmas with my husband’s family during my first year of medical school. My grandfather, a World War II veteran, both a best friend and hero of mine, had died. He died of septic shock secondary to MRSA in the ICU in which I would eventually rotate in as a resident. He died under the care of an intensivist who would ultimately become my attending. As my training continued, I was drawn to the ICU; the sickest of the sick. There are profound ties between infectious diseases and critical care. In the ICU, patients are either presenting with life-threatening infections, or, in the process of providing critical care, we place devices that carry risk for infection, and thus every day demands attention to the appropriate diagnosis, treatment and prevention of infection. As an infectious disease and critical care physician, I have been blessed to have many physician mentors in both fields. But truth be told, my greatest mentor is the one I lost. Every day, his death challenges me to continue to improve the outcomes for our critically ill patients.

PHILADELPHIA — About 95% of patients who say they are allergic to penicillin are really not, according to a presentation at the American College of Physicians Internal Medicine Meeting.

Infants with bronchiolitis caused by rhinovirus C were more likely to develop recurrent wheeze by age 3 years compared with infants who had bronchiolitis caused by other viruses, according to findings published in JAMA Pediatrics.

A recent study, named AsthmaDIET, found evidence that children with a diet higher in omega-3 fatty acids had fewer asthma symptoms caused by indoor air pollution, whereas children with diets higher in omega-6 fatty acids experienced more severe asthma symptoms.

The size of the peanut skin prick test size increased over time in infants at risk for peanut allergy, according to an abstract presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual meeting.

“Typhus is not dead. It will live on for centuries and it will continue to break into the open whenever human stupidity and brutality give it a chance, as most likely they occasionally will.” – Hans Zinsser. The lure of infectious disease began with books (science fiction, noir detectives, Arrowsmith), but the hook was sex and drugs. While debating a life in philosophy or neuroscience (but for the slaughter of mice), I stumbled into volunteering at the Berkeley Free Clinic. Mentored by charismatics at the radical front of free health care and harm reduction with dignity, these teachers had weathered the Vietnam War, AIDS crisis and multiple injection-drug epidemics. To keep up and care for clients, I had to understand not only chlamydia, abscesses and hepatitis C, but also feminism, gay liberation, sex work, homelessness and criminal justice. The infections were a window into the vulnerabilities of our social immune system. At the University of California, San Francisco, my ID teachers varied widely in appearance and constitution, as well as where they would return after rounds: the laboratories, the clinics, phone meetings with WHO, the city’s public health department and the one attending who would stop by the freeway underpass to sit with one of her struggling patients. ID was the hopeful work of hopelessly tangled systems: global commerce and immunoglobulins; gender, power and negotiating condoms; heroin, the hospital venting systems and where the water flows. My ID mentors and colleagues continue to inspire and surprise me with endless curiosity, rigorous intellectual integrity and ferocious passion for doing the right thing. Typhus is not dead, nor are MRSA, HIV, or human brutality. I am grateful to be an ID physician who can draw on a rich history and community to push against these with vigor and compassion, immersed in the ambitious life’s work of sex, drugs and microbes.

Supplementing atopic dermatitis treatment with probiotics does not benefit children, according to research presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual meeting.