Welcome to our Allergy and Immunology page where we showcase journal news, collections and highlights from our open access journals, as selected by our editors.
World Allergy Week 2020 took place on 28th June to 4th July this year, and to celebrate we curated open access research from across Springer Nature, including BMC and Springer. Read our related articles and special issue below to fit this years theme of 'COVID-19 and Allergy'.
Clinical and Translational Allergy is the official open access publication of EAACI. Read our featured article below as selected by our editor.
Is diet partly responsible for differences in COVID-19 death rates between and within countries?
Reported deaths in Germany from the recent pandemic are relatively low as compared to many European countries. Among the several explanations proposed, an early and large testing of the population was put forward. Most current debates on the virus focus on the differences among countries, but little attention has been given to regional differences and diet. The low-death rate European countries (e.g. Austria, Baltic States, Czech Republic, Finland, Norway, Poland, and Slovakia) have used different quarantine and/or confinement times and methods and none have performed as many early tests as Germany.
Among other factors that may be significant are the dietary habits. It seems that some foods largely used in these countries may reduce angiotensin-converting enzyme activity or are anti-oxidants. Among the many possible areas of research, it might be important to understand diet and angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) levels in populations with different death rates since dietary interventions may be of great benefit.
Allergy, Asthma and Clinical Immunology: The International/Canadian Hereditary Angioedema Guideline
Autoimmunity Highlights: Twenty years of research on the DFS70/LEDGF autoantibody-autoantigen system: many lessons learned but still many questions
BMC Immunology: Correlate tumor mutation burden with immune signatures in human cancers
Clinical and Molecular Allergy: Cetirizine use in childhood: an update of a friendly 30-year drug
Immunity & Ageing: “The ancient and the new”: is there an interaction between cytomegalovirus and SARS-CoV-2 infection?
Journal of Inflammation: SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 susceptibility and lung inflammatory storm by smoking and vaping
Autoinflammation with Infantile Enterocolitis Associated with Recurrent Perianal Abscesses
The NOD-like receptor family CARD domain containing 4 (NLRC4) gene was initially described in 2001; however, it is only since 2014 that its mutations, mostly heterozygous gain-of-function mutations with complete penetrance have been associated with distinct syndromes and diseases, known as NLRC4 inflammasomopathies. [Article Open Access until August 14th]
This review article addresses the pathophysiology, clinical manifestations, diagnostic approaches, and management of IgE-mediated food allergies.
Within the issue “Asthma: Novel developments from bench to bedside” a number of key topics relevant for asthma development reaching from epidemiology and lung function to the role of early immune regulation, genetics, and epigenetics as well as external factors such as viruses and the microbiome summarize recent knowledge paired with future perspectives for the next decade of asthma research and clinical translation. Insight into local airway immune responses translating from mice to men and the role of omics for asthma sum up the complex nature of this multifactorial disease. Several asthma phenotypes in combination with underlying endotypes are tackled in a number of the subsequent articles.