Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder. It is caused by an improper immune response to the protein gluten, found in wheat, rye, and barely, that damages the lining of the small intestine. There is no cure for celiac, and the only effective treatment is a gluten-free diet.

Gluten is a dietary protein that is naturally poorly digested, and therefore more likely to engage the immune system than other proteins, even in people without celiac.

However, the way inflammatory immune responses to gluten work remains poorly understood.

Leaving a ‘permanent mark’ on immunity

For this study in the journal Science, a research team from the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that, among mice that were genetically engineered predisposed to celiac disease, those that were infected with a virus called reovirus were more likely to have an immune response against gluten than mice not infected with a reovirus. This immune response is similar to what’s seen in people with the condition.

Although human infections with reoviruses are common, the viruses don’t cause symptoms in people. But the study also found that patients with celiac disease did have higher levels of antibodies against reovirus, compared to people without the condition.

The findings suggest that reovirus infection may leave a “permanent mark” on the immune system that sets the body up for developing celiac disease, the researchers said.

“A virus that is not clinically symptomatic can still do bad things to the immune system and set the stage for an autoimmune disorder,” such as celiac disease, said study co-author Dr. Bana Jabri, director of research at the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center.

“However, the specific virus and its genes, the interaction between the microbe and the host, and the health status of the host are all going to matter as well.”

That’s because new research shows a probiotic combination might help reduce hay fever symptoms, if it’s taken during allergy season.

Seasonal allergies can reduce sleep and productivity at work or school and can cause stress and embarrassment. In addition, current allergy medications have unwanted potential side effects, including dry mouth and drowsiness; thus the need for alternatives.

Previous studies have shown some probiotics can help to regulate the body’s immune response to allergies, but not all of the probiotics tested have demonstrated this benefit, University of Florida researchers say.

Regulating the immune system

Scientists think probiotics might work by increasing the human body’s percentage of regulatory T-cells, which in turn might increase tolerance to hay fever symptoms.

There is evidence that the probiotic combination of lactobacilli and bifidobacteria, helps maintain digestive health and parts of the immune system.

Acidophilus bacteria predominantly colonise the upper to lower part of the small intestine, while bifidum and longum colonise primarily the lower part of the small intestine to the large intestine.

In this study, researchers looked at a branded supplement, Kyo-Dophilus which contains the strains Lactobacillus gasseri KS-13, Bifidobacterium bifidum G9-1, and Bifidobacterium longum MM-2.

“Not all probiotics work for allergies. This one did,” said Jennifer Dennis, first author on the latest study.

Better quality of life

For their study the scientists randomly divided 173 healthy adults, who said they suffered seasonal allergies, into two groups.

Some took the combination probiotic, and others took a placebo. Each week during the eight-week experiment, participants responded to an online survey to convey their discomfort level.

The study was conducted at the height of spring allergy season.

During the study the scientists also analysed DNA from participants’ stool samples to determine how their bacteria changed, because probiotics aim to deliver good bacteria to the human’s intestinal system. The DNA test also confirmed who was taking the probiotic, said Bobbi Langkamp-Henken, senior author of the study.

Participants who took the probiotic reported improvements in quality of life, compared to those taking the placebo. For instance they suffered fewer allergy-related nose symptoms, which meant that they were less troubled during daily activities.

Although this study did not include severe allergy sufferers, it did show that those with milder seasonal allergies can see clinical benefit from taking the probiotics.

Writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition the scientists say: “To our knowledge, this is the first randomised, placebo-controlled trial addressing the clinical relevance of this particular combination of 3 probiotic strains on quality of life related to self-identified seasonal allergies.”

The findings, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, showed that chronic vitamin D deficiency in early childhood were linked to higher rates of asthma at aged 10, as well as allergy and eczema.

Researchers tracked vitamin D levels in a group of more than 260 children in Perth at a high risk of asthma from birth to age 10.

The more often the children showed low vitamin D levels, the more likely it was they experienced allergic immune responses in the first few years, said lead author Dr Elysia Hollams from the Telethon Kids Institute.

In addition, children with vitamin D deficiency at 6 months of age were more likely to experience two conditions associated with heightened asthma risk: increased colonisation of the upper airways by harmful bacteria and increased susceptibility to severe lower respiratory infections involving fever.

Necessary for immunity

Dr Hollams said the findings showed that vitamin D plays an important role in regulating the immune system as well as promoting healthy lung development and that the study’s findings shed new light on a contested area of research.

“While it has been suggested that inadequate vitamin D may be a factor contributing to the surge in asthma rates over recent decades…there has been a lack of research looking at whether vitamin D deficiency is more detrimental at certain periods in childhood.”

Specifically, Dr Hollams says this study shows for the first time that babies deficient in vitamin D have higher levels of potentially harmful bacteria in their upper airways, and are more susceptible to severe respiratory infections.

“Earlier research by our team and others around the world has identified the first two years of childhood as a critical period during which allergies and chest infections can combine to drive asthma development in susceptible children. Our new findings identify vitamin D deficiency as a co-factor that may promote this process,” she said

Supplements or sun?

This study comes not long after a major UK review which looked at evidence from the best quality trials on vitamin D and asthma and found that supplementing, alongside conventional medication, can help cut the risk of severe attacks by half.

Dr Hollams suggested there were still many unknowns in the field of vitamin D research.

“We still don’t know what the optimal level of vitamin D is for good lung health and immune function, and we don’t know if supplementation would address this issue, or if healthy sun exposure is what is required, given that vitamin D is an indirect measure of recent sun exposure,” she said.

This last point raises a potentially serious question about ongoing recommendations to keep kids out of the sun on the basis that it protects health.

A new survey has found that over one-third of Americans report health problems – from asthma attacks to migraine headaches – when exposed to common fragranced consumer products such as air fresheners, cleaning supplies, laundry products, scented candles, cologne, and personal care products.

The majority of fragrances used in cleaning supplies, air fresheners, and personal care products are synthetic fragrances – 95% of which are derived from petrochemicals. Fragrances derived from essential oils don’t trigger the same extreme responses.

• For more on this topic see our article Petrochemical beauty? No thanks!  See also our article A cleaner, greener home – without chemicals!

Early exposure to these powerful drugs is associated with an increase in food allergy diagnosis, new research from the University of South Carolina suggests.

The researchers from the College of Pharmacy, School of Medicine and Arnold School of Public Health used South Carolina Medicaid administrative data from 2007 to 2009 to identify children with food allergies and compared these to a control group taken from the same dataset, who had no food allergies.

Even after adjusting for factors including birth, breastfeeding, asthma, eczema, maternal age and urban residence, they found that children prescribed antibiotics within the first year of life were 1.21 times more likely to be diagnosed with food allergy than children who hadn’t received an antibiotic prescription.

Higher antibiotic use = more allergies

The association between antibiotic prescription and development of food allergy was statistically significant, and the odds of a food allergy diagnosis increased with the number of antibiotic prescriptions a child received, growing from 1.31 times greater risk with three prescriptions to 1.43 times with four prescriptions and 1.64 times with five or more prescriptions.

The interdisciplinary research team, led by Bryan Love, Pharm.D., found that the strongest association was in children who were prescribed cephalosporin and sulfonamide antibiotics, which are broad-spectrum antibiotics, compared with narrower spectrum agents such as penicillins and macrolides. The study was published recently in the journal Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology.

Healthy gut flora crucial

This research builds upon previous studies finding that normal gut flora is critical for developing the body’s tolerance to foreign proteins such as food.

Antibiotics are known to alter the composition of gut flora, and US children aged three months to three years are prescribed 2.2 antimicrobial prescriptions per year on average, according to the literature.

In the UK doctors are writing 10 million needless antibiotic prescriptions each year. Across Europe prescription rates for children under the age of 4 are higher than for any other age group.

The study’s results suggest a potential link between the rise in antibiotic prescriptions for young children and the rise in diagnosis of food allergies in children.

Given the study’s findings and the body of research suggesting that antibiotics are frequently improperly prescribed to treat viral infections, Love said that prescribing medical professionals should be cautious before ordering antibiotics for young children but noted that it can be difficult to distinguish between viral and bacterial infections.

“We need better diagnostic tools to help identify kids who truly need antibiotics,” he said. “Overusing antibiotics invites more opportunity for side effects, including the potential development of food allergies, and can encourage antibacterial resistance.”

• For more on this subject see also: New links between antibiotics, gut damage and modern disease

The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, suggests that a simple bowl of bran and some dried apricots in the morning could be all that’s needed. It also delves into how the immune system works with the good bacteria in the gut to help protect against life-threatening allergic responses.

There is a global allergy epidemic – and Australian children have the highest recorded rate of allergies in the world.

The study, led by Monash University in Victoria, Australia, revealed that it may be a lack of fibre in our diets that’s causing this deadly rise in allergies.

A healthy gut

The research, conducted using mice that were allergic to peanuts, found the animals were protected against the allergy when fed a high-fibre diet. In particular, the fibre appears to act by producing beneficial changes the gut microbiota, the bacteria in the gut that protect against food allergies.

The microbiota in the gut assist the immune system in resisting allergies through the breaking down of fibre into short-chain fatty acids. This opens up a potential route for drug therapy for allergies by delivering short-chain fatty acids as a treatment.

The scientists suggest that allergy treatments could use probiotics (beneficial bacteria) that recolonize the gut, or prebiotics (healthy foodstuffs) that could work together to prevent or reverse allergies

Unexpected benefits

The scientists, from the laboratory of Professor Charles Mackay, further unravelled how a high fibre diet protects against allergies. They found that short-chain fatty acids boosted a particular subset of the immune system called dendritic cells, which control whether an allergic response against a food allergen happens or not.

Effectively, increased levels of short-chain fatty acids switch these cells to stop the allergic response, while a lack of fibre may have an opposite effect. These specialised dendritic cells require vitamin A, another factor which can only be obtained through the diet, and is high in vegetables and fruits in the form of beta carotene.

While deficiency of vitamin A in adults is unusual, the researchers suggest that less than ideal levels of vitamin A in addition to short-chain fatty acids, could promote food allergies in infants. This may explain why the highest prevalence of allergies occurs in children and infants.

Lead researcher Jian Tan said the study had not only revealed how the immune system fails when a person becomes allergic, but how the immune system can be helped through diet, to prevent or lessen the effects of allergies. He said the next step was to conduct trials with humans to determine how a high-fibre diet can protect against challenges with allergic foodstuffs.

Eczema affects around a fifth of children in the UK. A breakdown of the natural skin barrier function and dry skin are thought to be triggers in early life, partly through genetic predisposition.

Environmental factors including water hardness and chlorine in household water, may also contribute to the skin barrier dysfunction. In fact, in the UK, domestic water tends to be harder in the south compared to the north, and the prevalence of eczema follows the same gradient.

Previous studies in the UK, Spain and Japan have shown associations between domestic water hardness and the risk of eczema in schoolchildren. However, the link between water hardness and eczema has not been studied in early infancy.

Skin barrier damage

The latest study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, examined the link between water hardness and chlorine concentrations in household water and damage to the skin’s natural barrier and eczema in 1300 three-month old infants from families across the UK.

The infants were checked for atopic dermatitis (childhood eczema) and their skin’s barrier function was assessed by measuring transepidermal water loss (TEWL) on the skin of an unaffected forearm.

Infants were also screened for mutations in the filaggrin (FLG) gene which can result in an impaired skin barrier function, which in turn allows allergens to penetrate the skin and predispose the body towards an allergic response.

Information on the use of a water softener in the home, frequency of bathing and use of moisturisers and bath products was also collected.

Living in a hard water area was associated with an up to 87% increased risk of eczema at three months of age, independent of domestic water chlorine content. The risk tended to be higher in children with mutations in the FLG skin barrier gene, but the difference was not considered not statistically significant.

Although the study attempted to account for potential confounding factors, such as bathing frequency and the use of soaps and shampoos, skin care and hygiene practices which could have had an effect on early emergence of eczema or dry skin prior to the study. There was also no information on children’s exposure to swimming pools, which contain much higher chlorine levels than domestic water and could have an additional detrimental effect on skin barrier function and risk of eczema.

More study needed

Dr Carsten Flohr, lead author from St John’s Institute of Dermatology at King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust said: “Our study builds on growing evidence of a link between exposure to hard water and the risk of developing eczema in childhood. It’s not yet clear whether calcium carbonate has a direct detrimental effect on the skin barrier, or whether other environmental factors directly related to water hardness, such as the water’s pH, may be responsible.”

“Interactions between hardness and chlorine levels, other chemical water constituents and the skin’s microflora may also play a role, and this warrants further research,” he added.

If your home is in a hard water area it is possible to fit an appliance to the mains water supply to remove dissolved minerals that make water ‘hard’. Using natural toiletries, free from harsh chemicals, on your baby may also lessen early damage to the skin barrier.

Natural Health News — Two air pollutants linked to climate change could also be a major contributor to the unparalleled rise in the number of people sneezing, sniffling and wheezing during allergy season.

The gases, nitrogen dioxide and ground-level ozone, appear to provoke chemical changes in certain airborne allergens that could increase their potency. That, in combination with changes in global climate, could help explain why airborne allergies are becoming more common. The findings were presented at a recent annual National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Nasal allergies are on the rise across the world. Scientists have long suspected that air pollution and climate change are involved in the increasing prevalence of allergies. But understanding the underlying chemical processes behind this phenomenon has proven elusive. The current research provides a starting point, in understanding how chemicals can affect the allergenic potential of airborne  substances.

In previous work the researchers from the Max Planck Institute explored how allergy-causing substances are altered in the air. Building on that work, they decided to dig deeper into how that happens and examine how traffic-related air pollutants could increase the strength of these allergens.

In laboratory tests and computer simulations, the researchers found that ozone (a major component of smog) oxidizes an amino acid that sets off chemical reactions that ultimately alter an allergenic protein’s structure. Meanwhile, nitrogen dioxide (found in car exhausts) appears to alter the separation and binding capabilities of certain allergens.

They believe that together, the two gases make allergens more likely to trigger the body’s immune response, especially in wet, humid and smoggy conditions.

In future research the team hopes to identify other allergenic proteins that are modified in the environment and examine how these affect the human immune system.

• See also Natural remedies to relieve hay fever misery

Natural Health News — Can you be sensitive to gluten and not have coeliac diseaese?

That is a question that researchers from the US National Institutes of Health set out to answer recently .

Many in the medical profession believe that coeliac disease is the only true gluten sensitivity disorder.  But nutritionists – and patients often see things differently.

In a small but well conducted study, researchers looked at 59 patients who weren’t diagnosed with coeliac disease or a wheat allergy but who believed gluten-containing food was causing them intestinal problems. Half were randomly given either less than 5 grams of gluten or a placebo of rice starch in pill form. After a week the participants switched pills.

After only one week, those who were taking the gluten pills reported a significant difference in symptoms compared to those who took non-gluten placebo pills. On top of intestinal pains, they felt abdominal bloating, a foggy mind, depression, and stomach ulcers.

In addition, they found that when switching the groups around, participants’ suspected non-coeliac gluten sensitivity became worse with symptoms ‘increasing significantly’ during the one week of gluten intake, compared with their week on the rice starch.

Gluten sensitivity – a spectrum

Increasingly, gluten sensitivity is being seen part of a broad spectrum, with coeliac disease on one end and mild gluten sensitivity on the other. Many people fall somewhere in the middle, testing negative through traditional blood tests for coeliac disease, but still experiencing silent inflammation and other harmful effects from eating wheat. They may even be asymptomatic or suffer only non-GI symptoms like my patient with migraines.

In medicine, this condition is now being called Non-Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity, or NCGS, which refers to patients who have gluten-related symptoms but not celiac disease or wheat allergy.

The science on NCGS is ever-evolving because it’s become a rapidly diagnosed condition that’s largely existed below the radar, according to the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness.

Possible symptoms reported in recent studies include digestive complaints such as abdominal pain, nausea, constipation or diarrhea, bloating and heartburn; and systemic symptoms like fatigue, skin rashes, headache, brain fog, depression/anxiety, limb numbness and joint pain.

The symptoms may appear anywhere from hours to days after ingesting gluten. NCGS patients may have GI and/or non-GI symptoms, and even though doctors may not yet agree about possible gluten sensitivity, these individuals usually improve on a gluten-free diet.

An article published in an upcoming edition of the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), examines the case of a 10 year-old girl who had an anaphylactic (severely allergic) reaction after eating blueberry pie.

Although she had a medical history of asthma and seasonal allergies, and known anaphylaxis to penicillin and cow’s milk, she wasn’t known to be allergic to any of the ingredients in the pie.

After weeks of testing on both the young girl and a sample of the pie, the article authors decided that what had caused the reaction was a streptomycin-contaminated blueberry. Streptomycin, in addition to being a drug used to fight disease, is also used as a pesticide in fruit, to combat the growth of bacteria, fungi, and algae.

“As far as we know, this is the first report that links an allergic reaction to fruits treated with antibiotic pesticides,” said allergist Anne Des Roches, MD,FRCP, lead study author. “Certain European countries ban the use of antibiotics for growing foods, but the United States and Canada still allow them for agricultural purposes.”

The authors note that new regulations from the Food and Drug Administration may help to reduce antibiotic contaminants in food, which will help reduce antibiotic resistance and may also help reduce this type of event.

“This is a very rare allergic reaction,” said allergist James Sublett, MD, ACAAI president-elect. “Nevertheless, it’s something allergists need to be aware of and that emergency room personnel may need to know about in order to help determine where anaphylactic reactions may arise. Anyone who is at risk for a life-threatening allergic reaction should always carry epinephrine. They also need to know how to use their epinephrine in an emergency situation.”