Publications by authors named "G K Khurana Hershey"
Background: The discriminatory and racist policy of historical redlining in the United States during the 1930s played a role in perpetuating contemporary environmental health disparities.
Objective: Our objectives were to determine associations between home and school pollutant exposure (fine particulate matter [PM], NO) and respiratory outcomes (Composite Asthma Severity Index, lung function) among school-aged children with asthma and examine whether associations differed between children who resided and/or attended school in historically redlined compared to non-redlined neighborhoods.
Methods: Children ages 6 to 17 with moderate-to-severe asthma (N = 240) from 9 US cities were included.
Human Epidemiology and Response to SARS-CoV-2 (HEROS): objectives, design, and enrollment results of a 12-city remote observational surveillance study of households with children, using direct-to-participant methods.
Am J Epidemiol
October 2024
Article Synopsis
- The HEROS Study is a prospective, multicity research effort conducted from May 2020 to February 2021, aimed at understanding risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission, particularly among children and those with asthma or allergies.
- The study utilized remote methods to enroll participants, who completed weekly surveys and nasal sampling, allowing researchers to gather data without in-person visits during the pandemic.
- A total of 5598 individuals were involved, ensuring a comprehensive household-based analysis of infection and transmission dynamics related to COVID-19.
Skin as the target for allergy prevention and treatment.
Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol
August 2024
Article Synopsis
- Genetic and environmental factors can disrupt the epithelial barrier, leading to a T2 inflammatory response, so protecting this barrier is key to reducing the risk of atopic diseases like food allergies.
- The review highlights structural aspects of the epithelial barrier in atopic dermatitis patients, including filaggrin gene mutations, the role of transient receptor potential vanilloid 1, and the microbiome's impact on skin health.
- It also covers both traditional and innovative therapies aimed at enhancing the skin barrier, such as moisturizers, topical treatments, probiotics, and emerging strategies like epicutaneous immunotherapy and gene therapy to prevent and treat food allergies.
The SunBEAm birth cohort: Protocol design.
J Allergy Clin Immunol Glob
August 2023
Article Synopsis
- Food allergies (FA) and atopic dermatitis (AD) often appear in infants, making it crucial to understand their causes for better prevention and treatment strategies.
- The SunBEAm birth cohort, funded by NIAID, is a multi-center study in the US that follows pregnant couples and their newborns, aiming to enroll 2,500 infants to explore environmental and biological factors influencing FA and AD.
- The cohort will collect a diverse range of samples and data, allowing researchers to examine the mechanisms behind early allergic reactions, focusing specifically on common allergens like egg, milk, and peanut.
Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that often precedes the development of food allergy, asthma, and allergic rhinitis. The prevailing paradigm holds that a reduced frequency and function of natural killer (NK) cell contributes to AD pathogenesis, yet the underlying mechanisms and contributions of NK cells to allergic co-morbidities remain ill-defined. Herein, analysis of circulating NK cells in a longitudinal early life cohort of children with AD revealed a progressive accumulation of NK cells with low expression of the activating receptor NKG2D, which was linked to more severe AD and sensitivity to allergens.
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