Allergy/Asthma News

NEW ORLEANS — Giving antihistamines to children who experience anaphylaxis only endangers their lives by delaying emergency treatment, researchers reported. Instead, children should be administered epinephrine and go straight to the ED.

NEW ORLEANS — Use of spirometry with bronchodilator testing can help reduce overdiagnosis of COPD as well as help differentiate COPD from asthma and asthma-COPD overlap syndrome, researchers reported at the CHEST Annual Meeting.

NEW ORLEANS — Switching inhaler types due to insurance formulary changes may lead to reduced lung function in children with asthma, according to data presented at the CHEST Annual Meeting.

The effect of electronic cigarettes without nicotine on allergic airway disease may depend on flavor, which suggests that some flavored e-cigarettes may alter the pathophysiology of asthma, a recent study on mice suggests.

The addition of a long-acting muscarinic antagonist to inhaled corticosteroid plus long-acting beta-2 agonist therapy in a single inhaler improves lung function and reduces exacerbations among patients with uncontrolled asthma, according to data from two phase 3 studies presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress.

The FDA’s Allergenic Products Advisory Committee recently voted in support of AR101, an investigational biologic oral immunotherapy for peanut allergy in children and teenagers, bringing it one step closer to approval.

AstraZeneca announced it has received FDA approval for the self-administration of benralizumab in a prefilled, single-use auto-injector pen for patients with severe eosinophilic asthma, according to a company press release.

In a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, nearly half of black children with uncontrolled asthma fared better with an increased dose of glucocorticoids, as compared with the addition of a long-acting beta agonist to low-dose glucocorticoids.

By the time Lilly Stairs was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis at the age of 19 — following an arduous series of tests and doctor visits — she had already been living with an autoimmune disease for 12 years.

Young black children whose parents or guardians reported having experienced chronic stress associated with racism may have poorer asthma control, according to data published in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.