Allergy and Immunology Journal Club on Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging service where people answer the question "What are you doing?" via 140-character messages from their cellphone, laptop or desktop.

Twitter is growing by 400% per year and is used by people ranging from Lance Armstrong to a past president of ACAAI, including Al Gore and Shaquille O'Neal in between. World-famous medical institutions such as Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic also have Twitter accounts.

Twitter to collect and share notes from conferences, Journal Club and Grand Rounds

Twitter works well for creating a searchable, "no login required" archive of notes. A hash tag is the little code preceded by a "#" that people use to indicate the topic about which they are Twittering. The idea is to ensure that tweets on the same topic can be found and aggregated more easily. Simply search for a particular hashtag on search.twitter.com. In order to make the Twitter postings (or "tweets") easily searchable, I included the hash tag "#JCAllergy" with each tweet.

Journal Club on Twitter

Episodic treatment with ICS and LTRA in children with wheezing did not decrease symptoms or oral steroid use.

Asthma predictive index (API) = 4 episodes of wheezing + 1 major or 2 minor criteria.

Asthma predictive index major criteria: parental asthma, atopic dermatitis, sensitization to 1 aeroallergen.

Asthma predictive index (API) - 3 blocks: wheezing, 3 major criteria, 3 minor criteria.

Asthma predictive index means that most children with wheezing may need to have skin prick testing to predict asthma risk.

Any anti-interleukin (IL) molecules used in clinical practice? No.

There are anti-IL2 receptor antibodies used to decrease incidence of rejection in kidney transplantation - IL2Ra or CD25.

L2 receptor has 3 components: alpha, beta and gamma. The 2 monoclonal antibodies available are against the alpha part, IL2Ra.


Video: Twitter in Plain English by CommonCraft.

References:
A Clinical Index to Define Risk of Asthma in Young Children with Recurrent Wheezing. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med., Volume 162, Number 4, October 2000, 1403-1406.
Allergy and Immunology Journal Club on Twitter
Twitter Updates from the Severe Asthma Workshop at the 2008 Annual Meeting of American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (ACAAI)
Twitter Dispatches from the New England Journal of Medicine's Horizons Conference. The Efficient MD.
I will be attending NEJM Horizons Conference to push the boundaries of traditional medical publishing, suggestions welcomed
Allergists Can Use Twitter Microblogging Service to Send Patient Reminders
Using Twitter to Microblog a CME Meeting
A Doctor's Opinion: Why I Started Microblogging on Twitter
Allergy and Immunology Journal Club on Twitter

Related:
As Web-enabled smartphones have become standard, the etiquette of using them during meetings is up for debate. http://bit.ly/311Ls1. NYTimes, 2009.

Updated: 06/22/2009