Daily allergy burden and heart rate characteristics in adults with allergic rhinitis based on a wearable telemonitoring system

Background: Allergic rhinitis includes a certain degree of autonomic imbalance. However, no information is available on how daily changes in allergy burden affect autonomic imbalance. We aimed to estimate associations between daily allergy burden (allergy symptoms and mood) and daily heart rate characteristics (resting heart rate and sample entropy, both biomarkers of autonomic balance) of adults with allergic rhinitis, based on real-world measurements with a wearable telemonitoring system. Methods: Adults with a tree pollen allergy used a smartphone application to self-report daily allergy symptoms (score 0–44) and mood (score 0–4), and a Mio Alpha 2 wristwatch to collect heart rate characteristics during two pollen seasons of hazel, alder and birch in Belgium. Associations between daily allergy burden and heart rate characteristics were estimated using linear mixed effects distributed lag models with a random intercept for individuals and adjusted for potential confounders. Results: Analyses included 2497 participant-days of 72 participants. A one-point increase in allergy symptom score was associated with an increase in next-day resting heart rate of 0.08 (95% CI: 0.02–0.15) beats per minute. A one-point increase in mood score was associated with an increase in same-day sample entropy of 0.80 (95% CI: 0.34–1.26) × 10−2. No associations were found between allergy symptoms and heart rate sample entropy, nor between mood and resting heart rate. Conclusion: Daily repeated measurements with a wearable telemonitoring system revealed that the daily allergy burden of adults with allergic rhinitis has systemic effects beyond merely the respiratory system.</p

Temperature-related changes in airborne allergenic pollen abundance and seasonality across the northern hemisphere : a retrospective data analysis

BACKGROUND: Ongoing climate change might, through rising temperatures, alter allergenic pollen biology across the northern hemisphere. We aimed to analyse trends in pollen seasonality and pollen load and to establish whether there are specific climate-related links to any observed changes. METHODS: For this retrospective data analysis, we did an extensive search for global datasets with 20 years or more of airborne pollen data that consistently recorded pollen season indices (eg, duration and intensity). 17 locations across three continents with long-term (approximately 26 years on average) quantitative records of seasonal concentrations of multiple pollen (aeroallergen) taxa met the selection criteria. These datasets were analysed in the context of recent annual changes in maximum temperature (T) and minimum temperature (T) associated with anthropogenic climate change. Seasonal regressions (slopes) of variation in pollen load and pollen season duration over time were compared to T, cumulative degree day T, T, cumulative degree day T, and frost-free days among all 17 locations to ascertain significant correlations. FINDINGS: 12 (71%) of the 17 locations showed significant increases in seasonal cumulative pollen or annual pollen load. Similarly, 11 (65%) of the 17 locations showed a significant increase in pollen season duration over time, increasing, on average, 0·9 days per year. Across the northern hemisphere locations analysed, annual cumulative increases in T over time were significantly associated with percentage increases in seasonal pollen load (r=0·52, p=0·034) as were annual cumulative increases in T (r=0·61, p=0·010). Similar results were observed for pollen season duration, but only for cumulative degree days (higher than the freezing point [0°C or 32°F]) for T (r=0·53, p=0·030) and T (r=0·48, p=0·05). Additionally, temporal increases in frost-free days per year were significantly correlated with increases in both pollen load (r=0·62, p=0·008) and pollen season duration (r=0·68, p=0·003) when averaged for all 17 locations. INTERPRETATION: Our findings reveal that the ongoing increase in temperature extremes (T and T) might already be contributing to extended seasonal duration and increased pollen load for multiple aeroallergenic pollen taxa in diverse locations across the northern hemisphere. This study, done across multiple continents, highlights an important link between ongoing global warming and public health-one that could be exacerbated as temperatures continue to increase. FUNDING: None

Predicting the severity of the grass pollen season and the effect of climate change in Northwest Europe

Allergic rhinitis is an inflammation in the nose caused by overreaction of the immune system to allergens in the air. Managing allergic rhinitis symptoms is challenging and requires timely intervention. The following are major questions often posed by those with allergic rhinitis: How should I prepare for the forthcoming season? How will the season's severity develop over the years? No country yet provides clear guidance addressing these questions. We propose two previously unexplored approaches for forecasting the severity of the grass pollen season on the basis of statistical and mechanistic models. The results suggest annual severity is largely governed by preseasonal meteorological conditions. The mechanistic model suggests climate change will increase the season severity by up to 60%, in line with experimental chamber studies. These models can be used as forecasting tools for advising individuals with hay fever and health care professionals how to prepare for the grass pollen season

Adopting transfer learning for neuroimaging: a comparative analysis with a custom 3D convolution neural network model.

BACKGROUND In recent years, neuroimaging with deep learning (DL) algorithms have made remarkable advances in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders. However, applying DL in different medical domains is usually challenged by lack of labeled data. To address this challenge, transfer learning (TL) has been applied to use state-of-the-art convolution neural networks pre-trained on natural images. Yet, there are differences in characteristics between medical and natural images, also image classification and targeted medical diagnosis tasks. The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of specialized and TL in the classification of neurodegenerative disorders using 3D volumes of 18F-FDG-PET brain scans. RESULTS Results show that TL models are suboptimal for classification of neurodegenerative disorders, especially when the objective is to separate more than two disorders. Additionally, specialized CNN model provides better interpretations of predicted diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS TL can indeed lead to superior performance on binary classification in timely and data efficient manner, yet for detecting more than a single disorder, TL models do not perform well. Additionally, custom 3D model performs comparably to TL models for binary classification, and interestingly perform better for diagnosis of multiple disorders. The results confirm the superiority of the custom 3D-CNN in providing better explainable model compared to TL adopted ones

Etudes précliniques sur une nouvelle stratégie de vaccination contre la tuberculose combinant le Bacille de Calmette-Guérin avec des vaccins à ADN plasmidique

La tuberculose est une maladie contagieuse causée par les bactéries appartenant au complexe Mycobacterium tuberculosis. On estime près de neuf millions de nouveaux cas et un million de décès chaque année dans le monde. De plus, approximativement un tiers de la population mondiale est infecté de manière latente, donc à risque de développer la maladie. Le seul vaccin préventif jusqu’à présent disponible est le Bacille de Calmette-Guérin (BCG). Cependant, son efficacité contre la forme pulmonaire de la maladie, contagieuse et plus fréquente chez l’adulte, est extrêmement variable. Le développement de nouveaux vaccins prophylactiques contre la tuberculose est basé sur une stratégie de remplacement ou d’amélioration de l’actuel vaccin BCG. De nombreux candidats vaccins sous-unitaires sont évalués dans un protocole de vaccination de rappel après le BCG. Ce dernier est en effet administré à plus de 80% des nouveau-nés et des nourrissons des populations à haut risque.<p>Le présent travail a eu pour but principal d’étudier une nouvelle approche de vaccination combinant le Bacille de Calmette-Guérin avec des vaccins sous-unitaires à ADN plasmidique dans différents modèles précliniques.<p>Plusieurs hypothèses tentent d’expliquer la faible efficacité du vaccin BCG, comme la faible induction de réponses immunitaires de type cellulaire T CD8+, le déclin de l’immunité protectrice induite au cours du temps, ou son répertoire antigénique limité. Les vaccins à ADN plasmidique induisant de telles réponses, le travail proposé a consisté au développement d’un nouveau protocole de vaccination basé sur la coadministration par la voie intradermique du vaccin BCG formulé avec un vaccin à ADN plasmidique codant pour un antigène mycobactérien. Nous avons observé dans plusieurs modèles murins (adulte et néonatal) une augmentation significative des réponses cellulaires de type CD4+ Th1 et CD8+, ainsi que de la réponse humorale spécifique. L’immunogénicité de cette approche a également été analysée dans un modèle animal de grande taille, à savoir le modèle porcin. Les résultats obtenus indiquent que les vaccins à ADN plasmidique sont capables d’augmenter les réponses spécifiques à l’antigène codé par le plasmide mais également celles spécifiques à d’autres antigènes exprimés par le vaccin BCG. Enfin, dans la deuxième partie du travail, nous avons développé des vaccins plasmidiques codant pour des combinaisons d’antigènes phase-spécifiques de M. tuberculosis et nous avons analysé leur immunogénicité en modèle murin.<p>En conclusion, nous avons montré que la stratégie de coadministration par la voie intradermique du vaccin BCG avec un vaccin à ADN plasmidique encodant des antigènes mycobactériens s’avère être un protocole de vaccination réaliste et efficace pour améliorer l’immunité induite par le vaccin BCG. Elle offre par ailleurs des perspectives pour être appliquée avec des plasmides codant pour des antigènes caractéristiques de la tuberculose latente, peu reconnus après vaccination BCG, pour protéger à la fois contre la tuberculose active d’une primo-infection et contre la réactivation d’une infection latente.Doctorat en Sciencesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

Familial hypersensitivity pneumonitis triggered by carpooling

This series reports cases of Cladosporium herbarum-related HP due to an uncommon exposure source, illustrating thegenetic background underlying HP, and highlighting the role of environmental home inquiry and serum precipitins indiagnosis and follow-u