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The twenty-first century has seen a fundamental shift in disease epidemiology with anthropogenic environmental change emerging as the likely dominant factor affecting the distribution and severity of current and future human disease. This is especially true of allergic diseases and asthma with their intimate relationship with the natural environment.

There is a scarcity of prospective studies investigating the relative roles of skin prick and intradermal testing, serum specific IgE, and extended oral challenges in diagnosing children with reported β-lactam allergies.

Human milk is rich in immuno-modulatory factors that have the potential to shape immune development and influence allergy risk in children. In this article, we describe how breast milk may contribute to making the infant less prone to developing allergies.

Allergic sensitization and reduced ability to respond to viral infections may contribute to virus-induced wheeze and asthma development in young children. Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDC) are rare immune cells that produce type I interferons (IFN-I) and play a key role in orchestrating immune responses against viruses. 

Peanut allergy is the most common childhood-onset, persistent food allergy. Peanut oral immunotherapy (OIT) is a potential treatment, but few studies prospectively examine the outcome of peanut OIT in young children using parent-measured doses compared to standard care (peanut avoidance).

Previous reports suggested that food proteins present in human milk (HM) may trigger symptoms in allergic children during breastfeeding, but existing evidence has never been reviewed systematically.

The dramatic increase in the prevalence of allergic disease in recent decades reflects environmental and behavioural changes that have altered patterns of early immune development. The very early onset of allergic diseases points to the specific vulnerability of the developing immune system to environmental changes and the development of primary intervention strategies is crucial to address this unparalleled burden.

Research question: Are asthma and allergies more common in adolescents conceived with assisted reproductive technologies (ART) compared with adolescents conceived without?

Excessive production, secretion, and retention of abnormal mucus is a pathological feature of many obstructive airways diseases including asthma. Azithromycin is an antibiotic that also possesses immunomodulatory and mucoregulatory activities, which may contribute to the clinical effectiveness of azithromycin in asthma.

Penicillin allergy accounts for the majority of all reported adverse drug reactions in adults and children. Foregoing first-line antibiotic therapy due to penicillin allergy label is associated with an increased prevalence of infections by resistant organisms and longer hospitalisation.