90 research outputs found
Editorial
Get PDFIn view of the COVID-19 pandemic which unfortunately has hit the whole world and because ESPAI is keen to keep you all safe, our workshops and all our in-person meetings will be postponed till this threat comes to an end with God’s will. Please get the latest updates on ESPAI activities from http://www.espai-eg.org/scientific.htm and from our society’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/TheESPAI. Our 16th International Congress will hopefully be held on September 23-24, 2020 in Cairo Sheraton Hotel. The preliminary program will appear on the congress website later on .This issue of the Egyptian Journal of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology contains many state-of-the- art articles. The review article is the Arabic version of the 2019 ARIA Care pathways (ICPs) for allergic rhinitis – Egypt. It is prepared by a group of esteemed international experts in allergy in collaboration with an Egyptian team from the Egyptian Society of Pediatric Allergy and immunology (ESPAI). ICPs are structured multi-disciplinary care plans detailing key steps of patient care. Airway ICPs (Integrated care pathways for airway diseases) were the first steps towards the development of ICPs for rhinitis and asthma multimorbidity. An executive summary is presented in this paper .The review article of this issue contains important info about the hot topic of these days; namely COVID-19. It discusses the current data on the disease in the pediatric age groups and its future perspectives in a concise and comprehensive way. It is worth reading and will provide you with up-to-date info in a nutshell .Three original articles were carefully selected after peer-reviewing by International and local experts in the field. The health-related quality of life in a group of Egyptian children with bronchial asthma is the title of the first article. The authors used the EQ-5D-Y questionnaire, which is a generic, youth-specific and age-appropriate measure of HRQoL. This questionnaire also comprises a visual analogue scale (VAS) which is judged by the patient. In the second article, the authors sought to investigate the sialylated glycoprotein Krebs von den Lungen-6 (KL-6), one of the lung epithelium-specific proteins, as a significant biomarker of alveolar injury in pediatric asthma. The third article investigated the value of interferon gamma as a co-player in the pathogenesis of idiopathic nephrotic syndrome. Its serum level was lowermost at time of diagnosis and increased with remission on corticosteroids .An English/Arabic glossary that contains a list of allergy and immunology relevant terms and expressions is included as well as a collection of abstracts from recent international publications in allergy/immunology. I would like to remind you that the WAO e-letter (News & Notes) is displayed on our website both in English and Arabic on monthly basis. On our homepage, you will find links to the World Allergy Organization (WAO) website and the WAO online journal. I encourage you indeed to submit your articles to this very well peer-reviewed journal .Please visit our journal’s website (https://www.jespai.org/) and we look forward to receiving some feedback about this issue. You may contact us through the “contact us” icon in our website on your left-hand side.Yehi
Increased expression of T- cell- surface CXCR4 in asthmatic children
Get PDFBackground: Signals delivered through the chemokine receptor CXCR4 upon interaction with its ligand, SDF-1 α/β result in the most efficacious chemoattraction of T lymphocytes to the asthmatic airways with the resultant lung inflammation and airway hyperresponsiveness. Objective: The extensive pharmacological and physiological evidence that CXCR4 chemokine receptor influences the allergic airway disease has stimulated us to study the relation between its expression in peripheral blood T lymphocytes and the exacerbation of asthmatic attacks of varying severity. Methods: The chemokine receptor CXCR4 was assayed by flow cytometry in peripheral blood T lymphocytes from 25 asthmatic children, during asthma exacerbation and after complete remission of symptoms and physical signs. The results were compared to those of 30 healthy children. Results: The CXCR4 expression in peripheral blood T lymphocytes was significantly increased in children with acute exacerbations of bronchial asthma as compared to controls (mean ± SD = 62.27 ± 17.57% versus 24.76 ± 6.88%; p < 0.001). After remission of acute attacks, the CXCR4 expression decreased significantly as compared to the values during attacks (mean ± SD = 40.90 ± 13.25%), however, the level of expression during quiescence was still significantly higher than the values of the controls (mean ± SD = 40.90 ± 13.25%; p < 0.001). The CXCR4 expression was significantly higher in children with acute severe asthma as compared to those with either mild or moderate attacks. During remission, patients with mild intermittent asthma had less expression of CXCR4 when compared to any grade of persistent asthma, while the results were comparable between all groups of persistent asthma of varying severity. A significant positive correlation could link the CXCR4% to the absolute eosinophilic count during acute asthma attacks. Conclusion: CXCR4 is over-expressed in T lymphocytes of asthmatic children. It was found to be related to disease activity and seems to be involved in the establishment and maintenance of chronic inflammation of the airways.Keywords: Asthma, chemokine receptors, CXCR4, children, T lymphocytesEgypt J Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2003; 1(2): 80-
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