A novel IoT architecture for measuring and visualizing influence of common factors on house dust concentration

The house dust mites are considered to be an allergen source and a main cause of allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma. House dust mites, their feces and other allergens which they produce are usually major constituents of house dust. Any stir in the air causes settled dust, and therefore allergen source found in it, to become airborne and thus easier to be inhaled by people, possibly causing different kinds of allergic reactions (sneezing, for example). In this paper, the correlation between common home activities (walking around, bed making, vacuuming etc.) and airborne dust concentration is examined. In order to do so, a novel Internet of things architecture is proposed that is capable of establishing that correlation. This proposed system not only collects dust concentration but it also visualizes it in an easy to understand and interpret way.

Nahrungsmittelallergien – Theorie und Praxis

Allergies manifest differently in every patient: Even when the same allergen source is the causing agent, means of sensitization and complexity of symptoms can vary strongly across patients. This often complicates the prevention, diagnostics and therapy of food allergies – or even makes them impossible. This article gives an overview of the underlying immunological principles of food-allergies, as well as of the current therapeutic and diagnostic approaches.

An alternative inhibition method for determining cross-reactive allergens

Background:Inhibition assays are an useful tool to identify the allergen of primary sensitization of cross-reactive allergens. Classical ELISA-based inhibition assays are limited by both the availability of commercial standardized allergen extracts and the experience and knowledge needed for making home-made extracts. Moreover the direct comparison of the inhibition ELISAs outcomes between different laboratories is difficult because of different sources of used allergen extracts and a number of methodological variations. Therefore, we propose a novel ImmunoCap (Phadia, Thermofisher Scientific) based immunoinhibition method with the use of commercially available Caps as the allergen source.Methods:The novel ImmunoCap based immunoinhibition method was developed and tested with sera from patients with a well-known cross-reactive sensitization for fig (Results:The amount of allergens (fig and ficus extracts) needed to reach a similar degree of inhibition was comparable for both inhibition methods.Conclusions:The ImmunoCap based inhibition assay, in addition to classical inhibition methods, is a valuable tool as the ImmunoCap analyzer and commercial allergens (Caps) are more widely available which makes the outcomes of inhibition tests comparable between different laboratories. Furthermore, in the ImmunoCap inhibition method the same protein source is used for both the inhibition of sIgE and sIgE measurement, which might be even more relevant when multiple cross-reactive allergens are tested.