Allergies & Asthma

At what point do you move from temporarily managing your allergy symptoms with over-the-counter solutions, to treating the cause — often for good — with immunotherapy? And what are the benefits? This blog dives into the four major reasons people consider sublingual immunotherapy (also known as allergy drops), and why it’s beneficial for those with

TTHealthWatch is a weekly podcast from Texas Tech. In it, Elizabeth Tracey, director of electronic media for Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, and Rick Lange, MD, president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, look at the top medical stories of the week. This week’s topics include computer-based therapy for PTSD,

Since 2000, Allergychoices has supported providers from every corner of the country with offering sublingual immunotherapy — a disease modifying allergy treatment. Each provider has their own story about offering this treatment, with personal anecdotes of how it has ultimately impacted both practice and patients. Amber Beckenhauer, DO, added allergy testing and sublingual immunotherapy to

There is a familiar, tropical, smell that comes to mind when you think back on beach days or soccer games in the middle of the summer — the sweet smell of sunscreen. Are you using allergy-safe sunscreen? For those with allergies and eczema, sunscreen is just another product that should be thoroughly examined and tested

The difference between a food intolerance and food allergies can be confusing. Find out what causes symptoms, what symptoms look like, diagnosis processes, and how allergy drop immunotherapy can treat the cause of food allergy. What is a food intolerance? A food intolerance can occur from a variety of causes including a missing enzyme needed to digest food,

Presentation A 72-year-old man presented to the doctor with complaints of hip pain and groin pain affecting his left lower extremities that gradually began over the last couple of months. The patient denied recent trauma. He had COPD and had received high-dose injections of triamcinolone as intermittent treatment over the course of his adult life.

SAN FRANCISCO — Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who changed treatment from so-called triple therapy to a two-drug product omitting the inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) component tended to see improved symptom control, as well as fewer adverse effects, a researcher said here. In a German registry study, it took about 14 months for half

SAN FRANCISCO — A plant-centric diet in early adulthood was associated with less risk of emphysema in middle age, results of a long-running cohort study indicated. Participants whose diets at enrollment were in the top quintile on the A Priori Diet Quality Score (APDQS) system had 60% lower odds of developing emphysema over 30 years

The COVID-19 pandemic was a double-edged sword for patient engagement. For some, the inability to access traditional, brick-and-mortar healthcare opened their minds to virtual solutions and helped them get more acutely involved with their health. For others, the past 2 years magnified feelings of isolation and helplessness, which perpetuated a sense of overwhelm about their

SAN FRANCISCO — Ordinary adolescents showed higher levels of a biomarker for airway inflammation in the days following rain or snow, researchers reported here. For every 2 mm/day of precipitation averaged over the previous week, Massachusetts teens showed a 3.64% increase (95% CI 0.72-6.65) in fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO), according to a group led

SAN FRANCISCO — For neighborhoods near a major coking operation in Pittsburgh, its shutdown at the end of 2015 was followed by markedly lower rates of respiratory disease hospitalizations, researchers reported here. Inpatient admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) among area residents were steadily increasing during 2013 to 2015. But from 2016 onward, they

SAN FRANCISCO — Phase III results look very good for a two-drug combination inhaler in helping asthma patients regain symptom control when maintenance medications weren’t doing the job. In the MANDALA trial, patients using the investigational product PT027, which combines 90 μg of albuterol with 80 μg of budesonide, were significantly less likely to experience

TTHealthWatch is a weekly podcast from Texas Tech. In it, Elizabeth Tracey, director of electronic media for Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, and Rick Lange, MD, president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, look at the top medical stories of the week. This week’s topics include use of ECMO in

As if sneezing and itching wasn’t enough, some people experience heartburn symptoms due to their environmental and/or food allergies. Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) might be to blame. It can be allergy-related, but mainly causes reactions that impact your digestive system. The first official EoE diagnosis was in the 1990s, but there’s been an increase in diagnoses and ongoing research

From a patient’s perspective, it’s simple to see why treating the cause of allergies is beneficial. But how does an employer benefit? Why would an employer want to offer disease-modifying allergy treatment, and what does their return on investment look like? Though this often looks different from employer to employer, three main reasons seem to

TTHealthWatch is a weekly podcast from Texas Tech. In it, Elizabeth Tracey, director of electronic media for Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, and Rick Lange, MD, president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso, look at the top medical stories of the week. This week’s topics include healthy lifestyle and Alzheimer’s,

Starting children on allergy immunotherapy while they’re young has a lot of benefits – they feel better, they miss less school, and it can halt the allergic march. But the idea of weekly injections can be scary and unrealistic for school-aged children. That’s where sublingual immunotherapy, or allergy drops, come in. This safe, simple, at-home

While the risk of anaphylaxis after administration of IV iron product was low among older adults, it was more common after certain iron products, researchers found. The highest adjusted incidence rates for anaphylaxis among Medicare recipients receiving IV iron was 9.8 cases (95% CI 6.2-15.3) per 10,000 first administrations of iron dextran (Dexferrum) and 4.0

You may have noticed your child’s eczema, or atopic dermatitis, symptoms before — their skin is dry, itchy, red, and swollen. Scratching only seems to make symptoms worse and your kiddo more miserable. You’ve tried topical creams, ointments, and lotions, but for some reason the symptoms keep coming and going, leaving you stumped. It probably

Mothers who were exposed to disinfectants on the job were more likely to have children with asthma, an analysis of a large birth cohort from Japan suggested. After adjusting for many factors including maternal return to work 1 year after giving birth, mothers who used disinfectants every day in the prenatal period were more likely

The intranasal live attenuated flu vaccine is just as safe for children with asthma as the intramuscular inactivated vaccine, a small clinical trial suggested. Within 42 days of vaccination, 10.8% of children who received the intranasal quadrivalent live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV4) experienced an asthma exacerbation compared with 14.7% of those who received the intramuscular

Doctors, scientists, and patient advocates described the tremendous harms of burn pits to active duty service members and veterans, ranging from cancers to severe respiratory illness and death, during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel on Wednesday. Subcommittee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) opened the hearing by stating that service