Allergy/Asthma News

A new point-of-care clinical decision tool, PEN-FAST, may help identify patients with reported penicillin allergies who can safely undergo oral challenges and receive beta-lactam antibiotics without needing formal allergy testing, according to research published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The FDA has issued a drug safety communication stating that it now requires a boxed warning for montelukast to strengthen the agency’s existing warning about the risk for neuropsychiatric events such as suicidal thoughts or actions associated with the drug, which is used to treat asthma and allergy, according to an agency press release.

Several physicians who spoke with Healio Primary Care applauded the FDA’s decision to make Pataday Twice Daily Relief and Pataday Once Daily Relief available over the counter to patients 2 years of age and older with itchy eyes associated with allergic conjunctivitis.

The FDA has approved the first generic of ProAir HFA inhalation aerosol — albuterol sulfate — for the treatment or prevention of bronchospasm with reversible obstructive airway disease, such as asthma, and the prevention of exercise-induced bronchospasm in patients aged 4 years and older, according to a press release.

In a study of 4,700 older adults with asthma, researchers found that symptoms and health care utilization remained different among African American and Hispanic survey respondents compared with white respondents even after adjustment for multiple social determinants.

Children whose mothers received high-dose vitamin D supplementation while pregnant were not less likely to develop asthma or recurrent wheeze at age 6 years than children whose mothers did not receive supplementation, according to follow-up data from the Vitamin D Antenatal Asthma Reduction Trial.

The FDA announced that it approved the oral immunotherapy Palforzia, the first treatment for peanut allergy in children aged 4 to 17 years.

Present-day asthma-related ED visits are more than twice as high in California neighborhoods that were deprioritized for mortgage investments, or redlined, in the 1930s when compared with areas that were deemed less risky for investments, according to a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

The International Severe Asthma Registry evaluated patients with asthma worldwide to describe demographic and clinical characteristics of these patients and the severity of the disease, according to a registry study published in CHEST.

A pharmacy-driven allergy assessment improved penicillin allergy documentation, increased the use of beta-lactam antibiotics and saved one hospital more than $21,000 over a 3-month period, according to prospective study findings that were presented at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Midyear Clinical Meeting and Exhibition.