Rhinoconjunctivitis Symptoms in Children and Adolescents with Asthma: A Longitudinal Clustering Analysis.

Background: Rhinoconjunctivitis phenotypes are conventionally described based on symptom severity, duration and seasonality and aeroallergen sensitization. It is not known whether these phenotypes fully reflect the patterns of symptoms seen at a population level.

Objective: To identify phenotypes of rhinoconjunctivitis based on symptom intensity and seasonality using an unbiased approach and to compare their characteristics.

Viral and non-viral episodes of wheezing in early life and the development of asthma and respiratory phenotypes among urban children.

Background: Viral wheezing is an important risk factor for asthma, which comprises several respiratory phenotypes. We sought to understand if the etiology of early-life wheezing illnesses relates to childhood respiratory and asthma phenotypes.

Methods: Data were collected prospectively on 429 children in the Urban Environment and Childhood Asthma (URECA) birth cohort study through age 10 years.

Home and school pollutant exposure, respiratory outcomes, and influence of historical redlining.

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.

Relationships between lung function, allergy, and wheezing in urban children.

Background: Allergic sensitization and low lung function in early childhood are risk factors for subsequent wheezing and asthma. However, it is unclear how allergic sensitization affects lung function over time.

Objective: We sought to test whether allergy influences lung function and whether these factors synergistically increase the risk of continued wheezing in childhood.

Rhinoviruses A and C elicit long-lasting antibody responses with limited cross-neutralization.

Rhinoviruses (RVs) can cause severe wheezing illnesses in young children and patients with asthma. Vaccine development has been hampered by the multitude of RV types with little information about cross-neutralization. We previously showed that neutralizing antibody (nAb) responses to RV-C are detected twofold to threefold more often than those to RV-A throughout childhood.

Respiratory syncytial virus infection during infancy and asthma during childhood in the USA (INSPIRE): a population-based, prospective birth cohort study.

Background: Early-life severe respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection has been associated with the onset of childhood wheezing illnesses. However, the relationship between RSV infection during infancy and the development of childhood asthma is unclear. We aimed to assess the association between RSV infection during infancy and childhood asthma.

Reducing Health Disparities in Asthma: How Can Progress Be Made.

Health disparities (recently defined as a health difference closely linked with social, economic, and/or environmental disadvantage) in asthma continue despite the presence of safe and effective treatment. For example, in the United States, Black individuals have a hospitalization rate that is 6× higher than that for White individuals, and an asthma mortality rate nearly 3× higher. This article will discuss the current state of health disparities in asthma in the United States.

Associations between outdoor air pollutants and non-viral asthma exacerbations and airway inflammatory responses in children and adolescents living in urban areas in the USA: a retrospective secondary analysis.

Background: Asthma prevalence and severity have markedly increased with urbanisation, and children in low-income urban centres have among the greatest asthma morbidity. Outdoor air pollution has been associated with adverse respiratory effects in children with asthma. However, the mechanisms by which air pollution exposure exacerbates asthma, and how these mechanisms compare with exacerbations induced by respiratory viruses, are poorly understood.

Asthma Management in Children.

Asthma is a common, complex heterogeneous disease often beginning in early life and is characterized by reversible airflow obstruction. The phenotypic differences that exist in children with asthma may impact underlying comorbid conditions and pharmacologic treatment choices. Prenatal factors for increased risk of asthma could include maternal diet and the maternal microbiome.

African-specific alleles modify risk for asthma at the 17q12-q21 locus in African Americans.

Background: Asthma is the most common chronic disease in children, occurring at higher frequencies and with more severe disease in children with African ancestry.

Methods: We tested for association with haplotypes at the most replicated and significant childhood-onset asthma locus at 17q12-q21 and asthma in European American and African American children. Following this, we used whole-genome sequencing data from 1060 African American and 100 European American individuals to identify novel variants on a high-risk African American-specific haplotype.

Mepolizumab for urban children with exacerbation-prone eosinophilic asthma in the USA (MUPPITS-2): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group trial.

Background: Black and Hispanic children living in urban environments in the USA have an excess burden of morbidity and mortality from asthma. Therapies directed at the eosinophilic phenotype reduce asthma exacerbations in adults, but few data are available in children and diverse populations. Furthermore, the molecular mechanisms that underlie exacerbations either being prevented by, or persisting despite, immune-based therapies are not well understood.

Effect of Infant RSV Infection on Memory T Cell Responses at Age 2-3 Years.

Background: It is unknown whether RSV infection in infancy alters subsequent RSV immune responses.

Methods: In a nested cohort of healthy, term children, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were collected at ages 2-3 years to examine RSV memory T cell responses among children previously RSV infected during infancy (first year of life) compared to those RSV-uninfected during infancy. The presence .

Seasonal airway microbiome and transcriptome interactions promote childhood asthma exacerbations.

Background: Seasonal variation in respiratory illnesses and exacerbations in pediatric populations with asthma is well described, though whether upper airway microbes play season-specific roles in these events is unknown.

Objective: We hypothesized that nasal microbiota composition is seasonally dynamic and that discrete microbe-host interactions modify risk of asthma exacerbation in a season-specific manner.

Methods: Repeated nasal samples from children with exacerbation-prone asthma collected during periods of respiratory health (baseline; n = 181 samples) or first captured respiratory illness (n = 97) across all seasons, underwent bacterial (16S ribosomal RNA gene) and fungal (internal transcribed spacer region 2) biomarker sequencing.

A dual role for DNA binding by Runt in activation and repression of transcription.

This work investigates the role of DNA binding by Runt in regulating the () gene and in particular two distinct -regulatory elements that mediate regulation by Runt and other pair-rule transcription factors during segmentation. We find that a DNA-binding-defective form of Runt is ineffective at repressing both the distal (DESE) and proximal (PESE) early stripe elements of and is also compromised for DESE-dependent activation. The function of Runt-binding sites in DESE is further investigated using site-specific transgenesis and quantitative imaging techniques.

Trajectories of adiposity indicators and association with asthma and lung function in urban minority children.

Background: A relationship between adiposity and asthma has been described in some cohort studies, but little is known about trajectories of adiposity throughout early childhood among children at high risk for developing asthma in urban United States cities. Moreover, early life trajectories of adipokines that have metabolic and immunologic properties have not been comprehensively investigated.

Objective: Our objective was to characterize trajectories of adiposity in a longitudinal birth cohort of predominately Black and Latinx children (n = 418) using several different repeated measures including body mass index (BMI) z score, bioimpedance analysis, leptin, and adiponectin in the first 10 years of life.

Does lung function change in the months after an asthma exacerbation in children?

Background: There are limited data describing lung function changes in children after an asthma exacerbation. Our hypothesis was that lung function does not fully recover in children in the months following an asthma exacerbation.

Methods: We used a data set of children with asthma where lung function (including FEV , FEV /FVC ratio and FEF ) was measured at 3-month intervals over a year.

Endotype of allergic asthma with airway obstruction in urban children.

Background: Black and Hispanic children growing up in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods have the highest rates of asthma and related morbidity in the United States.

Objectives: This study sought to identify specific respiratory phenotypes of health and disease in this population, associations with early life exposures, and molecular patterns of gene expression in nasal epithelial cells that underlie clinical disease.

Methods: The study population consisted of 442 high-risk urban children who had repeated assessments of wheezing, allergen-specific IgE, and lung function through 10 years of age.

Maternal stress and depression are associated with respiratory phenotypes in urban children.

Background: Prenatal and early-life exposure to maternal stress and depression is linked to development of recurrent wheezing in young children.

Objective: We sought to determine whether maternal stress and depression in early life are associated with nonatopic wheezing phenotype in urban children.

Methods: The Urban Environment and Childhood Asthma Study examined a birth cohort of children at high risk for asthma in low-income neighborhoods.

Odd-paired is a pioneer-like factor that coordinates with Zelda to control gene expression in embryos.

Pioneer factors such as Zelda (Zld) help initiate zygotic transcription in early embryos, but whether other factors support this dynamic process is unclear. Odd-paired (Opa), a zinc-finger transcription factor expressed at cellularization, controls the transition of genes from pair-rule to segmental patterns along the anterior-posterior axis. Finding that Opa also regulates expression through enhancer along the dorso-ventral axis, we hypothesized Opa's role is more general.