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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Helen Fisher

1. Paediatric Allergy Unit, Department of Women and Children’s Health, School of Life Course Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK
2. Children’s Allergy Service, Evelina London, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, London SE1 7EH, UK
Interests: children’s allergies; food allergy; eczema; clinical trials; research methods; qualitative research

Special Issue Information

Paediatric allergic diseases encompass a group of conditions including food allergy, eczema, asthma, and rhinoconjunctivitis. Individually, these illnesses cause children and their families to experience significant distress and disruption to their daily lives; this is magnified when the allergic march results in children developing more than one allergic disease. Although the symptoms of eczema, asthma, and rhinoconjunctivitis may be controlled with medication and food allergy managed with avoidance of the relevant allergen, there is currently no cure for these conditions. Whilst some children outgrow paediatric allergic diseases, many do not, and hence the allergic burden continues into adulthood, with resultant physical, psychosocial, and economic impacts on individuals and society.

Food allergy prevention trials show that the introduction of peanut protein in infancy prevents peanut allergy in a high-risk population and the introduction of egg before 6 months of age is likely to be beneficial in preventing egg allergy in the general population. Trials of food desensitization also show promise in increasing the threshold of reaction, providing some reassurance to families that accidental exposure to an allergen via cross contamination is unlikely to cause a severe reaction. Trials of immune-modulating treatments for asthma and eczema have resulted in improvements in the treatment of children with severe disease. Despite these recent advances, there are still many unanswered questions regarding the best way to prevent paediatric allergic disease, halt the atopic march, treat those who have these conditions, and reduce the burden of allergic disease on children, their families, and society. We welcome manuscripts that address any of these issues.

Dr. Helen Fisher
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Food allergy
Asthma
Eczema
Rhinoconjunctivitis
Treatment
Prevention
Quality of life
Economic burden

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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12 pages, 1021 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Progress of Home-Based Food Allergy Treatment during the Coronavirus Disease Pandemic in Japan: A Cross-Sectional Multicenter Survey

by Akihiro Maeta, Yuri Takaoka, Atsuko Nakano, Yukiko Hiraguchi, Masaaki Hamada, Yutaka Takemura, Tomoko Kawakami, Ikuo Okafuji, Makoto Kameda and Kyoko Takahashi

Children 2021, 8(10), 919; https://doi.org/10.3390/children8100919 - 15 Oct 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1655

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic’s impact on food allergy treatment such as home-based oral immunotherapy (OIT) is not known. This cross-sectional, questionnaire-based anonymized survey screened 2500 parents of children with allergic diseases and was conducted in the pediatric outpatient clinics of 24 hospitals. Basic clinical data of the children were collected along with the degree of allergy control, parental anxiety about emergency visits, and the risk of COVID-19 in the first state of emergency. A total of 2439 (97.6%) questionnaires were collected, and 1315 parents who were instructed to initiate home-based OIT for their children were enrolled (OIT group). Subjective OIT progress compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic was ascertained as “Full”, “Middle”, “Low”, “Little”, and “Stop” in 264 (20.1%), 408 (31.0%), 384 (29.2%), 203 (15.4%), and 56 (4.3%) participants, respectively. Anxiety about emergency visits and the risk of COVID-19 were negatively associated with the subjective OIT progress. In Japan, approximately half of the children continued smoothly the home-based OIT during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents with high levels of anxiety about the disruption of the medical care system due to COVID-19 and the risk of COVID-19 did not experience a smooth continuation of home-based OIT. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Clinical Research and Recent Advances in Paediatric Allergic Diseases)

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Graphical abstract

Review

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14 pages, 2031 KiB

Open AccessReview

An Overview of the Relevance of IgG4 Antibodies in Allergic Disease with a Focus on Food Allergens

by Thomas A. E. Platts-Mills, Behnam Keshavarz, Jeffrey M. Wilson, Rung-chi Li, Peter W. Heymann, Diane R. Gold, Emily C. McGowan and Elizabeth A. Erwin

Children 2021, 8(5), 418; https://doi.org/10.3390/children8050418 - 20 May 2021

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3651

Abstract

Antibodies of the IgG4 isotype are strongly associated with allergic disease but have several properties such as not precipitating with allergens, not activating complement and poor binding to Fcγ receptors that argue against a pro-inflammatory role. In keeping with that, IgG4 antibodies are a striking feature of the response to immunotherapy. In two naturally occurring situations IgG4 antibodies are common with low or absent IgE antibodies. The first example is children raised in a house with a cat and the second is eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). In many population-based cohorts, the ownership of a cat in early childhood is associated with a decreased prevalence of a cat allergy at age 10. The second example (i.e., EoE) is a novel form of food allergy that is not mediated by IgE and is related to consuming cow’s milk or wheat. In EoE, patients have IgG4 to milk proteins in high > 10 µg/mL or very high > 100 µg/mL titers. Enigmatically these patients are found to have deposits of IgG4 in the wall of their inflamed esophagus. The factors that have given rise to EoE remain unclear; however, changes in food processing over the past 50 years, particularly ultra-heat treatment and the high pressure homogenization of milk, represent a logical hypothesis. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Clinical Research and Recent Advances in Paediatric Allergic Diseases)

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