At the 2nd EAACI Pediatric Allergy and Asthma Meeting (PAAM 2011) that opens October 14 in Barcelona, the main issue and the general theme of the meeting is (The detection and reduction of the early causes of childhood allergy), in the meeting Prof. Halken stated that hypotheses which suggest that certain lifestyle and nutrition methods may be a reason behind the infection of early symptoms of allergy, as it has been showed that good breastfeeding in the first 4-6months can reduce the risk of atopic eczema and cow’s milk protein allergy, that’s why researchers say that the occurrence of allergy is usually due to a Combination of genetic and environmental reasons, these reasons may lead to the protection or the development of this disease, also they listed other factor contributing in the occurrence allergy such as pollution especially during the time of childhood and in developed countries.

Also Prof. Halken said that the factors causing allergy have changed within time as the reasons has become larger depending on the new life style creating more factors causing allergy such as exposure to tobacco smoke, food, house dust mites, pets and pollens is a prerequisite for development of allergic diseases, he also added that there still many other unknown factors which cause allergy.

Other than all the external mentioned below factors, Prof. Halken, said that allergies may develop due to genetic factors which can affect the susceptibility to the external environmental factors, so the risk will become more likely and may increase in children who have family medical records and atopic dermatitis.

Age is a changing factor that widely affect the symptoms of allergy as some of these symptoms disappear when growing up, and they  may be replaced with other symptoms, as children commonly show allergy symptoms to cow’s milk protein in their first years, whereas allergy to inhalant agents mostly occurs later in childhood.

A large study was made to check this test, as it has been done on 1700 pregnant women who are in high risk of the chromosomal abnormalities, and 212 among them were affected by the Down syndrome.

This research was supervised and led by several doctors from several universities from San Diego, and Los Angeles, the results of this test are considered successful as it could identify 98.6% of the Down syndrome in pregnant women, also it showed a very small percentage  0.8%of failure in providing a clinical interpretation.

According to these good successful results on large number of samples, this test will be effective in case of women who are considering invasive testing.

And a doctor who participated in the study said that , if this test can be used in the method they described, then women who show fine and normal pregnancy can avoid an invasive diagnostic procedure and all its related problems such anxiety and cost, also the probability of fetal loss.

The Down syndrome is considered a dangerous disease as it is a disorder that usually occur in chromosomes with symptoms like mental retardation, characteristic facial features, and, often, heart defects, and the bad news is that affects 550 babies born each year in the US, which is considered large number relatively.

The reason behind this syndrome is having three copies of chromosome number 21in each cell in an individual, rather than having usual two copies which is considered normal, to undergo this test some information are required such as age of the mother, information from the measurement of maternal serum markers and ultrasound markers in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy.

This test is successful to detect 90% of Down syndrome while, have wrong diagnosing percentage of 2-5% but researcher as now working to reduce this wrong ratio.

In this issue Dr. Deborah Clegg, associate professor of internal medicine, said that the estrogen has large effect on metabolism, while it’s really new for them, and never done before to this about sex hormones as a main and important regulators of food intake and body weight.

This study was first made on mice as their study was the first to reveal that estrogen, acting through two hypothalamic neural centers in the brain, can control weight in female bodies by regulating hunger and energy expenditure. as the tests on mice showed that when they don’t have the estrogen receptor alpha (which is molecule that is responsible of sending signals of estrogen to neurons) in those specific part of the brain can become an obese and also may have other diseases like diabetes and heart disease, while these studies didn’t show the same results on male mice, however the researchers assured that there must be an estrogen receptor sites which is still unknown to them which plays the same rule in doing the regulation method in male mice as well as female ones.

The place of these receptors is throughout the body, however researchers said they could manage to determine two specific populations of estrogen receptors that can control the balancing of energy for female mice.

This subject and these study is considered important for postmenopausal women, as many of were against hormonal replacement therapy, this study is subjected to lead into new hormonal replacement therapies in which estrogen must reach a specific place in the brain and do the job required which is to control the weight of the body, including that this therapy avoid the risk of full body estrogen maintaining such as breast cancer and stroke.

As some studies released in 2002 showed that hormone can also be a reason behind the increased risk of cardiovascular disease, many doctors stopped telling their menopausal women to undergo long-term estrogen therapy as a result of that study, but a doctor said that in concerning the job of estrogen in postmenopausal women is still unknown for sure.

A new study say that there is a large number of people who have body dysmorphic disorder relation, as one person out three who have nose surgery have this disease according to the study, this number shows an increase through years as some earlier studies showed that 10% of people who have the plastic surgery suffer from the condition.

In this issue David B. Sarwer, associate professor of psychology at the Center for Human Appearance at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania said that it’s normal for people to have dissatisfaction about their look, but there has to be a limit in which this the person can go to see a plastic surgeon, this limit should rise occur when the dissatisfaction affect the daily activities and in the way of dealing with people, sometimes this feeling in certain people can highly affect their social relationships, even sometimes they will have problems in having a job or maintaining one for considerably long time.

And he also said that it’s normal to wake up in the morning and see something that would bother us in the mirror and wish it to look different, but for BDD people this thinking will never go away from their minds, this will make it hard to focus in the regular day life issues including family and work issues, as they think all the time about their nose, regularly checking the mirror and don’t usually feel good when people check their profile.

This report was published after implementing tests among 266 patients who were evaluated for 16 month by plastic surgeons in Belgium, as they asked to give their opinion about rhinoplasty procedure, and also to talk about the symptoms they suffer from about body dysmorphic disorder the results showed that only 2% want to undergo the surgery for medical reasons and showed symptoms of the disorder, on the other hand people who said they want to have the surgery for cosmetic reasons only, 43% showed signs of the disorder.