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Purpose: Up to now, there is no generally accepted biomarker to indicate the clinical response of immunotherapy. This study mainly analyzed the correlation between eosinophil cationic protein-myeloperoxidase (ECP-MPO) test papers and other immunotherapy indices in subcutaneous immunotherapy of dust mites and to explore whether the test paper can be used as an auxiliary index to quickly evaluate the efficacy of immunotherapy. Patients and methods: This study included 53 participants who received subcutaneous immunotherapy at the allergy clinic of Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University and 28 control participants. Six visits were conducted during a prospective study over one year. The results of the ECP-MPO test paper, nasal secretion eosinophil smear and count, nasal secretion ECP concentration, and clinical symptom scores were collected during five follow-up visits after the start of subcutaneous immunotherapy. Th1/Th2/Th17 cytokines, chemokines, IgE, IgG4 against dust mite components, and ECP concentrations were detected in the serum of participants at baseline, six months, and one year after subcutaneous immunotherapy. Results: The ECP test paper is not only easy to operate, but also can effectively and quickly detect the concentrations of ECP in the nasal secretion and diagnose allergic rhinitis. Symptom score is an important index for evaluating clinical immune efficacy, during subcutaneous immunotherapy, the ECP test paper showed a positive correlation with the symptom score. Simultaneously, during immunotherapy, the changes in the chromogenic grading of the test paper were synchronized with the changes in inflammatory cytokines and eosinophilic chemokines in Th2 cells of serum dust mite IgE. The sIgG4 against dust mites weakly negatively correlated with the concentration of ECP in nasal secretions and the color classification of the ECP test paper. Conclusion: The ECP-MPO test paper has a certain correlation with subcutaneous immunotherapy markers of allergic rhinitis, indicating that the ECP test paper may become an auxiliary biomarker to replace other complex laboratory tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The incidence of allergic rhinitis (AR) is increasing year by year, and the pathogenesis is complex, in which diet may play an important role. The role of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in AR is still controversial. Previous studies have looked at the effects of PUFA during pregnancy, childhood, and adolescence. In this study, we aimed to determine the association between dietary intake of PUFA and AR in adults. Methods: We used the NHANES database from 2005 to 2006 to include a total of 4,211 adult subjects. We collected dietary PUFA intake data and information on AR. Logistic regression and restricted cubic spline models were constructed to examine the association between PUFA intake and AR in adults. The t test was used to compare daily PUFA intakes in patients with and without AR. Results: In the fully adjusted model (OR: 1.016; 95% CI: 1.003; 1.028), PUFA intake was positively correlated with allergic symptoms, hay fever, and AR in adults (p < 0.05). In addition, daily PUFA intake was significantly higher in people with allergic symptoms, hay fever, and AR than in people without the disease (p < 0.01). Conclusions: Our results suggest a positive association between dietary PUFA intake and AR in adults to a certain extent. Future studies on dietary PUFA dose will provide new strategies for the prevention and treatment of allergic diseases such as AR related to non-pharmaceutical interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study aimed to develop deep learning (DL) models for differentiating between eosinophilic chronic rhinosinusitis (ECRS) and non‐ECRS (NECRS) on preoperative CT. Design: Axial spiral CT images were pre‐processed and used to build the dataset. Two semantic segmentation models based on U‐net and Deeplabv3 were trained to segment the sinus area on CT images. All patient images were segmented using the better‐performing segmentation model and used for training and testing of the transferred efficientnet_b0, resnet50, inception_resnet_v2, and Xception neural networks. Additionally, we evaluated the performances of the models trained using each image and each patient as a unit. Participants: A total of 878 chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) patients undergoing nasal endoscopic surgery at Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University (Hubei, China) between October 2016 to June 2021 were included. Main outcome measures: The precision of each model was assessed based on the receiver operating characteristic curve. Further, we analyzed the confusion matrix and accuracy of each model. Results: The Dice coefficients of U‐net and Deeplabv3 were 0.953 and 0.961, respectively. The average area under the curve and mean accuracy values of the four networks were 0.848 and 0.762 for models trained using a single image as a unit, while the corresponding values for models trained using each patient as a unit were 0.893 and 0.853, respectively. Conclusions: Combining semantic segmentation with classification networks could effectively distinguish between patients with ECRS and those with NECRS based on preoperative sinus CT images. Furthermore, labeling each patient to build a dataset for classification may be more reliable than labeling each medical image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: There are increasing reports of a link between chronic constipation and allergies in children. However, similar epidemiological evidence is limited in the general adult population. Therefore, in this study, we attempted to assess the association between chronic constipation and allergy in adults aged ≥20 years in the USA. Methods: We established a logistic regression model to test the relationship between chronic constipation and 19 specific immunoglobulin E (sIgE) types in adults aged ≥20 years using large-sample data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey database (2005–2006). The weekly defecation times of the allergic and non-allergic groups were compared using the t test. Results: We found that sIgE-sensitized participants had a 0.723 lower risk of chronic constipation than the general population (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.566–0.923). There was a negative association between chronic constipation and sensitizations to peanut (odds ratio (OR) = 0.579, 95% CI = 0.381–0.935), egg (OR = 0.335, 95% CI = 0.134–0.838), dog (OR = 0.723, 95% CI = 0.522–0.965), and cockroach (OR = 0.540, 95% CI = 0.373–0.784). In addition, the frequency of defecation per week increased significantly in people allergic to peanuts and cockroaches (p < 0.05). Discussion/Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrate an inverse relationship between sIgE sensitization and chronic constipation in adults. However, the specific association mechanism needs to be further studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is a local inflammation of the nasal mucosa and sinus that persists for >12 weeks. As CC chemokine ligand (CCL) 19 expression is known to be elevated in CRS, and CCL 19, CCL21, and CCL25 share the same atypical chemokine receptor 4, so we focused on CCL21 and CCL25. Objectives: To investigate the expression of CCL21 and CCL25 in different types of CRS and their significance in CRS development. Methods: A total of 116 patients participated in the study, and uncinate process mucosa or nasal polyp (NP) specimens were collected during surgery. Western blotting and immunohistochemistry were performed to detect the expression of CCL21 and CCL25, respectively, in the nasal mucosa. Immunofluorescence was used to determine their cellular localization in NPs, whereas macrophage culture was used to determine their relationships with macrophages. Results: Immunohistochemistry revealed that the expressions of CCL21 and CCL25 were increased in NPs only. Western blotting revealed that these expressions were gradually increased in control, CRS without NP and CRS with NP groups and were positively correlated with disease severity. Furthermore, increased expressions of CCL21 and CCL25 in NPs were not related to eosinophil infiltration. Immunofluorescence results demonstrated colocalization of CCL25+ cells and CD68+ macrophages. CCL25 expression was increased in macrophage culture, especially in M1 macrophages, while CCL21 expression was not significantly associated with macrophages. Conclusions: CCL21 and CCL25 were significantly upregulated in NPs and positively correlated with disease severity. CCL25 upregulation was related to M1 macrophages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]