Allergy and Immunology News of the Day

Health News of the Day is a daily summary made from the selected links I post on Twitter. It is in a bullet points format with links to the original sources which include 350 RSS feeds that produce about 2,500 items per day.

• Abdominal obesity is strongly associated with decreased lung function. Abdominal obesity is already linked with diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease as part of metabolic syndrome. Researchers defined abdominal obesity as a waist circumference of greater than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men http://is.gd/m8zL
  
  
• The American Board of Allergy and Immunology is on Twitter @a_iboard and Facebook http://is.gd/rP40
  
  
• Food-specific IgG4, or ratio food-specific IgG4/IgE, may predict tolerance development in food allergy http://is.gd/mckX
  
  
• Maternal immune cells "teach" those of the fetus how to balance the need for self-defense and immunologic tolerance http://is.gd/oZYq
  
  
• Video: Horse treated for grass allergy with avoidance and antihistamines http://bit.ly/spSw8
  
  
• Psoriasis drug Raptiva (efalizumab) is withdrawn from the market due to 3 cases of PML http://is.gd/rGgx and http://is.gd/rGgD
  
  
• Efalizumab (Raptiva), mAb against CD11a, was also tried for treatment of severe atopic dermatitis http://is.gd/rGpt
  
  
• PPIs do not improve asthma control in patients with asthma and GERD who do not have heartburn symptoms http://bit.ly/4iHC

Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.