Publications by authors named "Yamini Virkud"

Omalizumab was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treatment of any single food allergy or multiple food allergies in children aged 1 year and older and adults. There is currently no formal guidance regarding recommended best practices for omalizumab use in food allergy, including patient selection, anticipated goals and outcomes of therapy, procedure for monitoring patients who elect to start omalizumab therapy, and ways in which omalizumab can be incorporated into the landscape of food allergy management and daily clinical practice. This work group report was developed by the food allergy therapies subcommittee of the Adverse Reactions to Foods Committee within the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The immunometabolic mechanisms underlying variable responses to oral immunotherapy (OIT) in patients with IgE-mediated food allergy are unknown.

Objective: To identify novel pathways associated with tolerance in food allergy, we used metabolomic profiling to find pathways important for food allergy in multiethnic cohorts and responses to OIT.

Methods: Untargeted plasma metabolomics data were generated from the VDAART healthy infant cohort (N = 384), a Costa Rican cohort of children with asthma (N = 1040), and a peanut OIT trial (N = 20) evaluating sustained unresponsiveness (SU, protection that lasts after therapy) versus transient desensitization (TD, protection that ends immediately afterward).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The burden of dietary restrictions includes the high cost and limited availability of allergen-friendly products which disproportionately affects people with food insecurity.

Objective: To better understand access to allergen-friendly food for college students experiencing food insecurity with food allergies or other diet-treated conditions by surveying college campus food pantries.

Methods: A total of 120 randomly selected US colleges/universities were recruited to complete FOODiversity's Food Insecurity Questionnaire about campus food pantry operations, dietary restrictions, and food-insecurity initiatives and provide details about their resources and training dedicated to supporting food-insecure young adults who avoid specific food(s).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The immunometabolic mechanisms underlying variable responses to oral immunotherapy (OIT) in patients with IgE-mediated food allergy are unknown.

Objective: To identify novel pathways associated with tolerance in food allergy, we used metabolomic profiling to find pathways important for food allergy in multi-ethnic cohorts and responses to OIT.

Methods: Untargeted plasma metabolomics data were generated from the VDAART healthy infant cohort (N=384), a Costa Rican cohort of children with asthma (N=1040), and a peanut OIT trial (N=20) evaluating sustained unresponsiveness (SU, protection that lasts after therapy) versus transient desensitization (TD, protection that ends immediately afterwards).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: An estimated 7.6% of children and 10.8% of adults have IgE-mediated food-protein allergies in the US.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Prior studies of peanut sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) have suggested a potential advantage with younger age at treatment initiation.

Objective: We studied the safety and efficacy of SLIT for peanut allergy in 1- to 4-year-old children.

Methods: Peanut-allergic 1- to 4-year-old children were randomized to receive 4 mg peanut SLIT versus placebo.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: We evaluated factors influencing the timing of allergen introduction in the U.S., including updated peanut introduction guidelines.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: There are conflicting associations reported between food allergies (FAs) and poor growth, with some indication that children with multiple FAs are at highest risk.

Objective: We analyzed longitudinal weight-for-length (WFL) trajectories from our healthy cohort to evaluate growth in children with IgE-mediated FAs and food protein-induced allergic proctocolitis (FPIAP), a non-IgE-mediated FA.

Methods: Our observational cohort of 903 healthy newborn infants was prospectively enrolled to evaluate the development of FAs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Studies on the efficacy of peanut sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) are limited. The durability of desensitization after SLIT has not been well described.

Objective: We sought to evaluate the efficacy and safety of 4-mg peanut SLIT and persistence of desensitization after SLIT discontinuation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The paradigm for food allergy management has been strict avoidance of the food allergen. There is literature supporting a "high-threshold" phenotype, those who tolerate a small-to-modest amount of allergen but react to larger amounts. There is no consensus for best practice for these "high-threshold" individuals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied young kids with a condition called FPIES, which is caused by certain foods, to learn more about it.
  • They found that only a few kids in a large group had FPIES, and many of them were triggered by oats, rice, or milk.
  • They discovered that the poop of kids with FPIES had different bacteria compared to those without it, which could help explain why some kids get sick from certain foods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Complex interactions between the gut microbiome and immune cells in infancy are thought to be part of the pathogenesis for the marked rise in pediatric allergic diseases, particularly food allergies. Food protein-induced allergic proctocolitis (FPIAP) is commonly the earliest recognized non-immunoglobulin E (IgE)-mediated food allergy in infancy and is associated with atopic dermatitis and subsequent IgE-mediated food allergy later in childhood. Yet, a large prospective longitudinal study of the microbiome of infants with FPIAP, including samples prior to symptom onset, has not been done.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied data from over 14,000 people to understand how certain steroids in the body are affected by asthma and its treatments.
  • They found that people with asthma usually had lower levels of 17 specific steroid metabolites, especially those using a treatment called inhaled corticosteroids (ICS).
  • The treatment helped lower these steroid levels but also caused some problems, like fatigue and anemia, suggesting it's important to regularly check hormone levels in asthma patients on ICS to ensure they stay healthy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recent advances in high-throughput T cell receptor (TCR) sequencing have allowed for new insights into the human TCR repertoire. However, methods for capturing antigen-specific repertoires remain an area of development. Here, we describe a potentially novel approach that utilizes both a biological and statistical enrichment to define putatively antigen-specific complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) repertoires in unselected individuals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • FPIES is a type of food allergy that affects the stomach and intestines, and the study looked into its effects and related factors.
  • The research found that certain foods like oats, rice, and cow's milk often trigger FPIES, and many patients had a family history of other digestive diseases.
  • Patients with more food triggers, especially cow's milk and bananas, were more likely to avoid foods and have trouble gaining weight.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Food protein-induced allergic proctocolitis (FPIAP) is an early and common manifestation of food allergy, yet its epidemiology and relationship to other allergic diseases remain unclear.

Objective: To prospectively define the incidence of FPIAP as it is being diagnosed clinically in the community and to identify factors associated with its development.

Methods: A total of 1003 of 1162 eligible serial healthy newborn infants recruited from a single suburban pediatrics practice were followed prospectively for the diagnosis of FPIAP.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Localized scleroderma (LS) is a chronic inflammatory and fibrosing skin disorder. We present baseline data on the juvenile LS (jLS) cohort from the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA) Legacy Registry, a multicenter observational registry of pediatric rheumatologic disorders.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional analysis of children with jLS enrolled in the CARRA Legacy Registry between May 2010 and April 2014.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF