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Conference Coverage: 2024 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting

March 8, 2024

The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) Annual Meeting wrapped up on February 26, 2024. Below are research highlights presented at the meeting.

Decreased asthma, allergic disease risk associated with early-life daycare attendance

A poster presentation by the University of California, San Francisco’s Jonathan Witonsky, MD, MAS, and colleagues showed that attending daycare early in life had a protective effect against perennial aeroallergens. The authors found that children attending daycare had clinically significant lower total IgE levels than children who did not attend daycare. Researchers collected demographic and clinical measures from mothers and their children born at >36 weeks’ gestation in the Puerto Rican Infant Metagenomic and Epidemiologic Study of Respiratory Outcomes (PRIMERO) cohort and surveilled those children for their first two years of life with blood samples for total IgE and perennial allergen specific IgE testing. Witonsky explained that children in Puerto Rico face a higher risk of asthma and asthma-related mortality as compared with their White counterparts in the U.S. Read More

Rebamipide may combat low-grade inflammation in post-COVID-19 syndrome patients

In this study, a total of 62 patients aged 42 to 55 years with post-COVID-19 syndrome using NSAIDs for joint pain were divided in two groups: group one received rebamipide 100 mg 3 times daily and omeprazole 20 mg daily for 28 days, while group two received omeprazole alone. The authors tracked the participants’ CRP levels before and after intervention and found that group one had significant improvement of CRP after treatment, while group two showed no significant changes. Their findings suggest that rebamipide may be useful for the rehabilitation of patients with post-COVID syndrome. Read More

The most effective atopic dermatitis treatments may also be most harmful

In this meta-analysis of all available systemic treatments for atopic dermatitis (AD), high-dose abrocitinib and low-dose upadacitinib were found to be the most effective treatments but were also associated with the most harm to patients. Dupilumab, lebrikizumab, and tralokinumab were generally of intermediate effectiveness and among the safest, but modestly increased the frequency of conjunctivitis. Low-dose baricitinib was among the least effective across all outcomes. Read More

Omalizumab appears to boost tolerance to multiple food allergies

Researchers assessed whether omalizumab, a monoclonal anti-IgE antibody, would be safe and effective as monotherapy in patients with multiple food allergies. Their findings suggest that omalizumab treatment for 16 weeks was superior to placebo in increasing the reaction threshold for peanut and other common food allergens in people as young as one year of age. Read More

neffy effective for treating anaphylactic symptoms in children after oral food challenge

Intranasal neffy could provide a non-injectable alternative for anaphylaxis treatment, according to this phase 3 study. The efficacy and safety of a single dose of the epinephrine nasal spray was assessed in pediatric patients with allergy symptoms induced by an oral food challenge. The study included 15 patients aged 6 to 17 years of age who were dosed with neffy when exhibiting respiratory, gastrointestinal, or circulatory symptoms that were grade 2 or higher, according to the Severity Classification of Organ Symptoms by the Japanese Society of Allergology Anaphylaxis Guidelines 2022. No patients needed a second dose of epinephrine within 15 minutes post-dose, and the median time to symptom resolution was 16 min (range, 1 - 90 min). Read More