The effect of residential urban greenness on allergic respiratory diseases in youth: A narrative review

Background: Environmental exposures across the life course may be a contributor to the increased worldwide prevalence of respiratory and allergic diseases occurring in the last decades. Asthma and rhinoconjunctivitis especially contribute to the global burden of disease. Greenness has been suggested to have beneficial effects in terms of reduction of occurrence of allergic respiratory diseases. However, the available evidence of a relationship between urban greenness and childhood health outcomes is not yet conclusive. The current review aimed at investigating the current state of evidence, exploring the relationship between children's exposure to residential urban greenness and development of allergic respiratory diseases, jointly considering health outcomes and study design. Methods: The search strategy was designed to identify studies linking urban greenness exposure to asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis, and lung function in children and adolescents. This was a narrative review of literature following PRISMA guidelines performed using electronic search in databases of PubMed and Embase (Ovid) from the date of inception to December 2018. Results: Our search strategy identified 2315 articles; after exclusion of duplicates (n = 701), 1614 articles were screened. Following review of titles and abstracts, 162 articles were identified as potentially eligible. Of these, 148 were excluded following full-text evaluation, and 14 were included in this review. Different methods for assessing greenness exposure were found; the most used was Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. Asthma, wheezing, bronchitis, rhinoconjunctivitis, allergic symptoms, lung function, and allergic sensitization were the outcomes assessed in the identified studies; among them, asthma was the one most frequently investigated. Conclusions: The present review showed inconsistencies in the results mainly due to differences in study design, population, exposure assessment, geographic region, and ascertainment of outcome. Overall, there is a suggestion of an association between urban greenness in early life and the occurrence of allergic respiratory diseases during childhood, although the evidence is still inconsistent. It is therefore hard to draw a conclusive interpretation, so that the understanding of the impact of greenness on allergic respiratory diseases in children and adolescents remains difficult

Sequestrati dalla vendetta: “rimanere chiusi fuori dall’oggetto”

RiassuntoA partire dal loro lavoro di psicoterapeute e attraverso alcuni frammenti clinici che si riferiscono ad un gruppo di adolescenti svoltosi in un quartiere a rischio di Palermo, le Autrici analizzano la dimensione mafiosa non restringendola al solo comportamento criminale; piuttosto declinandola lungo alcuni significanti: non identità e gruppo mafioso che colonizza e sottomette lo psichismo del singolo; fantasmi familiari potenti e spietati che impediscono il costituirsi di sé originali e autonomi; personalità impastate di indifferenza emotiva e vendicatività. Significanti che rendono conto delle vaste aree di desertificazione e pietrificazione – resistenza al cambiamento – avvertita dagli psicoterapeuti che prendono in carico giovani di famiglie mafiose. Parole chiave: mafia, psicoterapia, gruppo, vendetta, identità, resistenza, cambiamentoKidnapped by revenge: “being locked out of the object”Abstract Starting from their work as psychotherapists and by means of some clinical fragments which refer to a group of teenagers of a neighbourhood at risk in Palermo, the Authoresses analyze the Mafia dimension not limiting it to a criminal behaviour only. They rather decline it along some signifiers: non identity and mafia group which colonizes and subjugates the indi-vidual’s psychism. Powerful and merciless family ghosts who prevent from building original and autonomous selves. Personalities kneaded with emotional indifference and vindictiveness. Signifiers which account for the large desertification and petrification areas – resistance to change – that psychotherapists, who deal with young people belonging to Mafia families, are able to feel. Key word: mafia, psychotherapy, group, revenge, identity, resistance, chang

Comparison of ammoniated and nonammoniated extracts in children with latex allergy

The use of ammoniated or nonammoniated latex extracts for the diagnosis of latex allergy is still a matter of debate. The aim of our study was to compare the characteristics of the two types of extracts by immunoblotting and RAST techniques in children with ascertained latex allergy

Impact of allergic rhinitis on asthma: effects on bronchodilation testing

A remarkable relationship exists between the upper and lower airways. Bronchial obstruction is a paramount feature of asthma, and its reversibility is considered a main step in asthma diagnosis

L'alessitimia come disturbo della regolazione affettiva

Alexithymia is a theoretical construct concerning the ability to contact our feelings and the ability to describe them in words. It is very useful in clinical experience and also in empirical research for its operationalization and applicability possibility. After more than 40 years from its original definition, with clinical observation of patients defined “psychosomatics” according a classic definition, alexithymia has become one of the most investigated disease in the last decades. This paper aims to explore etiopathogenetic hypotheses and contemporaneous prospective within which it is possible to understand the relevance of the construct both in clinical experience and in empirical research. Furthermore, the paper examines alexithymia assessment methods to provide a complete and updated description of tools now available for clinical research. We also wish to underline the fundamental limit in a detailed study on alexithymia: the absence of psychometric tools to assess the disease in developmental age. This limit is related to the difficulty of building research tools able to understand the developmental movement in emotional processing capacity during childhood. However, there are recent preliminary studies on children/teens and preteens which pave the way for research in this direction

Safety and tolerability of seasonal ultra-rush, high-dose sublingual-swallow immunotherapy in allergic rhinitis to grass and tree pollens: an observational study in 193 children and adolescents

We conducted a large observational study in 193 children and adolescents with allergic rhinitis due to grass or tree pollens to evaluate the safety and tolerability of an ultrarush high-dose sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) regimen reaching a maintenance dose of 300 index of reactivity within 90 minutes

Multiple IgE recognition on the major allergen of the Parietaria pollen Par j 2

tThe interaction between IgE antibodies and allergens is a key event in triggering an allergic reaction. Thecharacterization of this region provides information of paramount importance for diagnosis and therapy.Par j 2 Lipid Transfer Protein is one of the most important allergens in southern Europe and a well-established marker of sensitization in Parietaria pollen allergy. The main aim of this study was to map theIgE binding regions of this allergen and to study the pattern of reactivity of individual Parietaria-allergicpatients. By means of gene fragmentation, six overlapping peptides were expressed in Escherichia coli, andtheir IgE binding activity was evaluated by immunoblotting in a cohort of 79 Parietaria-allergic patients.Our results showed that Pj-allergic patients display a heterogeneous pattern of IgE binding to the differentrecombinant fragments, and that patients reacted simultaneously against several protein domains spreadall the over the molecule, even in fragments which do not contain structural features resembling thenative allergen. Our results reveal the presence of a large number of linear and conformational epitopeson the Par j 2 sequence, which probably explains the high allergenic activity of this allergen

Relationship between rhinitis duration and worsening of nasal function

While it is well known that asthma is characterized by airway remodeling, few studies instead have investigated this issue in patients with allergic rhinitis (AR)