Obesity, inflammation, and asthma severity in childhood: data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001-2004.

Background: The prevalences of asthma and obesity in children have increased significantly during the past 2 decades. The basis for the relationship between pediatric asthma and obesity is not well established.

Objectives: To explore the association between obesity and asthma severity in children and adolescents and to test whether obesity-induced inflammation, as characterized by serum C-reactive protein (CRP), is associated with increased severity of asthma.

Safety of open food challenges in the office setting.

Background: Open food challenges are a practical alternative to double-blind, placebo-controlled food challenges in confirming clinical sensitivity or tolerance to a food, and the risks associated with open challenges are unknown.

Objective: To examine the safety of open food challenges administered in an office setting.

Methods: A retrospective medical record review of open food challenges, administered in a university-based pediatric allergy-immunology clinic during a 3-year period, was performed.

Clinical characteristics of peanut-allergic children: recent changes.

Objective: The goal was to determine whether patients seen in a referral clinic are experiencing initial allergic reactions to peanuts earlier, compared with a similar population profiled at a different medical center 10 years ago, and to investigate other changes in clinical characteristics of the patients between the 2 groups.

Methods: We reviewed the medical charts of peanut-allergic patients seen in the Duke University pediatric allergy and immunology clinic between July 2000 and April 2006.

Results: The median ages of first peanut exposure and reaction were 14 and 18 months, respectively; the respective ages in a similar population profiled between 1995 and 1997 were 22 and 24 months.

Burkholderia glumae infection in an infant with chronic granulomatous disease.

An 8-month-old boy developed a necrotic lung mass from which Burkholderia glumae was recovered, leading to the diagnosis of chronic granulomatous disease (CGD). While other Burkholderia species have been identified as important pathogens in persons with CGD, B. glumae has not been previously reported to cause human infection.

Disseminated Candida tropicalis in a patient with chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis.

Chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis is a heterogeneous group of immunodeficiencies associated with persistent candidal infections. Patients with chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis are rarely associated with systemic infections caused by other fungi, but almost never by Candida. The authors report a case of a 16-year-old with chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis who developed a fungemia with Candida tropicalis.