The publications and abstracts listed below are provided solely as educational and information resources.

Maternal Autoimmune Diseases, Asthma and Allergies, and Childhood Autism Spectrum Disorders - A Case-control Study
Lisa A. Croen, PhD; Judith K. Grether, PhD; Cathleen K. Yoshida, MS;
Roxana Odouli, MSPH; Judy Van de Water, PhD
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2005;159:151-157.

Objective: To investigate the association between physician-documented diagnoses of maternal autoimmune diseases, allergies, and asthma around the time of pregnancy and subsequent diagnoses of autism in children.

Results: The final study population included 407 cases and 2095 controls. A similar proportion of case and control mothers had a diagnosis of any autoimmune disease in the 4-year period surrounding pregnancy (10.3% vs 8.2%, P = .15). After adjustment for maternal factors, only 1 autoimmune condition, psoriasis, was significantly associated with ASDs (adjusted odds ratio, 2.7; 95% confidence interval, 1.3-5.8). A greater than 2-fold elevated risk of ASD was observed for maternal asthma and allergy diagnoses recorded during the second trimester of pregnancy.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that maternal autoimmune disorders present in women around the time of pregnancy are unlikely to contribute significantly to autism risk. Further etiologic investigations are needed to confirm these results and should include objective documentation of diagnoses and consider a larger set of maternal immune-related conditions, including asthma and allergies.

Find this case study at Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine

The following summaries represent additional studies and publications. To find these articles in their entirety follow the link below:

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0105-4538

Anti-IgE: a significant breakthrough in the treatment of airway allergic diseases (Article summary)
Louis R. Allergy. 2004; 59(7):698-700.

In this editorial, Louis notes that long-term clinical studies with omalizumab have been shown to reduce symptoms and exacerbations as well as to improve quality of life in uncontrolled corticosteroid treated asthmatics. Moreover, in most of these studies, the clinical improvement with anti-IgE was often obtained together with a reduction of the needed dose of corticoids.

Efficacy and tolerability of anti-IgE therapy with omalizumab in patients with poorly controlled (moderate-to-severe) allergic asthma (Article summary)
Ayres JG, Higgins B, Chilvers ER, Ayre G, Blogg M, Fox H. Allergy. 2004;59(7):701-708.

This study shows that in a real-life setting, treatment with anti-IgE administered for 12 months to best standard care benefited patients with poorly controlled, moderate-to-severe allergic asthma and reduced by 50% the asthma deterioration related incidents (ADRI). The benefit of anti-IgE was observed irrespective of the nature of the drug previously used as add-on to inhaled corticoids.

Efficacy and tolerability of anti-IgE therapy with omalizumab in patients with concomitant allergic asthma and persistent allergic rhinitis: SOLAR (Article summary)
Vignola AM, Humbert M, Bousquet J, et al. Allergy. 2004;59(7):709-717.

Presented data from this study shows that anti-IgE, administered every 2/4 weeks for 28 weeks in asthmatics uncontrolled despite moderate to high doses of inhaled corticosteroids combined to LABA for most of them, provided a 33% reduction in the number of subjects requiring oral corticoids; and 6% reduction in subjects requiring inhaled corticoids.

The effect of omalizumab on antigen-stimulated nitric oxide (NO) production in A549 human alveolar epithelial cells (Poster presentation summary)
Frieri M, Huang Y-C

In A549 human alveolar epithelial cells stimulated by interleukin-1β (IL-1β), IL-1β + dust mites, and epidermal growth factor, omalizumab inhibited NO production at 24 hours. As NO production is considered a marker for inflammation, these results support an anti-inflammatory effect of omalizumab.