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Category Archives: Transhuman News
CRISPR genome editing and immunotherapy the early adopter – Medical Xpress
Posted: April 25, 2017 at 4:36 am
April 24, 2017 Credit: Cancer Research UK
It's been a couple of years since the genome editing tool CRISPR first hit the headlines. And talk of its potential to cure all manner of diseases, create superhumans and bring dinosaurs back from the dead has followed.
But among that speculation, one area of medicine has been quick to pick up the technology and is now leading the way in early clinical trials.
In this second post in our series taking a closer look at CRISPR, we explore its potential for new developments in cancer immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy can take a range of forms. Some experimental approaches use viruses that kill cancer cells and alert the immune system to attack. Others involve giving patients drugs that release the 'brakes' on immune cells to target cancer. And some use specially engineered immune cells that when injected into a patient have the potential to hunt out and kill cancer cells.The aim of immunotherapy treatments is to alert the body's immune system to cancer, so that it's better equipped to recognise and fight the disease.
In each of these cases, scientists need to be able to understand and fine-tune the body's complex immune system. And some are turning to CRISPR for help.
Dr Martin Pule, a clinical senior lecturer in haematology at UCL, says that genome editing techniques such as CRISPR have quickly become part of the tool-kit for researchers like him.
"In the past, many of the technical problems around introducing new genes into cells were worked out, but we didn't have an easy way of efficiently and precisely disrupting existing genes," he says. "New genome editing technologies changed all that."
By using CRISPR, scientists are able to tweak specific genes in viruses or the body's own immune cells, and so make them behave differently.
Researchers have been able to do this before using similar techniques, but the excitement around CRISPR is that this can be done much quicker, cheaper and more precisely than ever before.
Out of the lab, into the patient
Genome editing techniques have been used in people to treat cancer and other diseases before.
There was lots of excitement when news broke in 2015 of a 1 year old girl with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) being treated with a similar editing technique known as TALENs, after all other treatments had failed.
She received a transplant of cancer-fighting immune T cells from a donor, which had been tweaked in the lab to give them 2 new characteristics.
Normally, the donated cells would see their new environment as foreign and attack the patient's healthy cells, but genes that control this process were turned off. The T cells would also be susceptible to attack from the anti-cancer drugs that the baby was receiving, and so modifications were made to protect them.
She responded well to the treatment, and another infant received a similar therapy.
Following in the footsteps of its cousin TALENs, CRISPR itself has moved on from the lab to clinical trials. Late last year, a Chinese group became the first to use CRISPR-edited cells in humans.
The team took immune cells from a patient with an aggressive lung cancer and edited them in the lab. This editing deactivates a gene that allows tumours to put the 'brakes' on these immune cells, preventing them from attacking cancer cells.
By switching off the gene, which produces a molecule on the cells' surface called PD-1, the full force of the body's immune system is released, helping it clear the tumour. Drugs that target PD-1 are among the much-lauded immunotherapy treatments already showing promise in advanced melanoma and lung cancers. So there's a lot of hope that CRISPR may provide another step forward here too.
10 patients will be involved in the early-stage Chinese trial, and it will look at whether the treatment is safe, rather than testing effectiveness.
The scientists are also hoping to start clinical trials using CRISPR to treat bladder,prostateandkidney cancers. It's also positive news that both blood cancers and solid tumours appear to be responding to various immunotherapy approaches, as different challenges are faced in treating these diseases.
Kickstart the CAR
One clever immunotherapy trick fuses together 2 components of the immune system with different jobs.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells are a mix of an antibody molecule, which can home in on a specific target on tumour cells, fused to a T cell that provides the knock-out blow to the cancer cell.
We've blogged before about how these engineered cells work, and small trials in 2011 caused lots of excitement. But one of the latest updates is that using CRISPR instead of older genome editing techniques might supercharge these CAR T-cells even further.
The older technology is less precise and can result in the genes mistakenly being inserted at random locations in the cell's DNA. The knock-on effect is that the engineered cells' might be less effective or unintended side-effects could be introduced.
But a US-based group found that CRISPR improved the precision with which the modified gene was inserted into T cells. Their research suggests that the cells were then more potent in their fight against leukaemia in mice because they had more stamina. The researchers are now hoping to test these findings in people.
"Cancer cells are relentless in their attempt to evade treatment, so we need CAR T cells that can match and outlast them," Dr Michel Sadelain, the researcher leading the study at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said at the time.
It's findings like these that will hopefully make engineered immune cell treatments better and kinder in the future, though they aren't yet the Holy Grail.
"In one kind of leukaemia called B-ALL, almost 100% of children who received engineered T cells responded, despite having a disease which had become resistant to all standard treatments," says Pule.
This suggests that, in some circumstances, there may not be an upper limit on who may respond to these treatments. But achieving this in other cancers will take further fine-tuning. In other diseases, such as another kind of blood cancer called DLBCL, the response rates are more like 60%.`
"This reflects the fact that a good CAR T cell product is hard to make, or that there are factors inside the tumour making the T cells less effective," Pule adds.
Lots of the progress using CAR T cells has so far been in blood cancers rather than solid tumours, which have even tougher conditions.
Because CRISPR allows scientists to do lots of small-scale tinkering, this is a rapidly developing field and researchers are trying to find solutions.
"Right now a lot of people are asking why there's this response gap between DLBCL and B-ALL. Can we edit something in the CAR T cell, or put something extra in which will increase the response rates?"
One reason might be that the tumour lives in a hostile environment that stops the engineered T-cells' ability to attack the cancer cells. One way around this is to delete the molecules on T cells that coordinate the stop messages from the microenvironment.
"This strategy looks like it might be quite effective and could increase the number of patients who respond," says Pule.
The other side of immunotherapy
Some of the research that's taken place since CRISPR burst onto the scene has also raised more questions than answers. The immune system is a powerful and complicated machine, and we don't yet understand how to control it.
Not all of these treatments have been as successful as hoped. As well as varying response rates, they can also cause serious side effects, including, in rare cases, death.
There have been recent reports of patients with bladder cancer whose tumours increased in size after immunotherapy treatment, although this has caused some debate among researchers. Side effects including extreme fever or organ damage have also been well documented in clinical trials.
In the US, a total of 5 patients died following treatment with an experimental CAR T cell therapy for ALL. The clinical trial was paused after 3 people died, and then stopped after 2 more deaths.
While this is very rare, it's clear that as well as working to make treatments more effective in more people, researchers also need to look at how they can reduce side effects.
Similar problems were seen in the past in the early days of treatments such as combination chemotherapy, before they were refined.
Pule points to how scientists are already using genome editing to increase safety. For example, in many cases, it isn't possible to engineer a patient's own T cells and so cells from a donor are needed.
But this raises some challenges.
"The donor T cells might attack the recipient causing graft-versus-host disease," says Pule. Graft-versus-host disease is a condition where the donor cells see their new environment as foreign and attack it. "If we remove a specific molecule in the donor T cells using gene-editing technology, we can reduce the chance of this happening."
This is how the two infants with ALL were treated.
Where next?
Like many new technologies, CRISPR was greeted with excited fanfare in some parts, and a more cautious realism is now settling in.
It's clear that CRISPR opens up so many doors for immunotherapy and lets researchers go further, more easily than ever before. But as the technology is understood better, its limitations and challenges also come into focus.
The third part of our CRISPR series will take a look at what the future might hold for CRISPR and cancer research.
Explore further: CAR T cells more powerful when built with CRISPR, researchers find
Cellular therapy hasn't had much success in fighting solid tumors, partly because it's been difficult to deliver anti-cancer T cells to the tumors.
In lung cancer patients who were taking immunotherapy drugs targeting the PD-1 pathway, testing for CD8 T cell activation in their blood partially predicted whether their tumors would shrink. The results are scheduled for ...
Researchers at Houston Methodist demonstrated that a surface protein called OX40, responsible for keeping one type of immune system cell alive, can trigger the death of liver immune cells, in turn starting a chain reaction ...
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Adam and Genome Part Eight – Patheos (blog)
Posted: at 4:36 am
THE THEOLOGY CHAPTERS
Scots first chapter deals with four principles with which to read the Bible. As Scot says at the outset Theology which is designed to investigate that nonempirical reality in some ways, can provide a map onto which we can locate science and which can challenge science. (p. 95). Exactly my point. The empirically observable and testable world is not all there is to reality. Scots concern is we will all gain clarity if Christians learn how to speak about Adam and Eve in a context that both affirms conclusions about the genome and challenges some conclusions drawn from the Human Genome Project. (p. 97).
The first of the four principles by which to study the Bible and talk with others about it is respect and respectful discourse for disciplines other than Biblical studies, and in this case science, and particularly genetics. I agree with Scots statement on p. 99 that it is disrespectful to Scripture itself to expect the authors of Gen. 1-11 to be scientists in advance of the scientific era that already understand DNA etc. There is no evidence that they did.
If one takes the related field of cosmology, what we have is the use of phenomenological not scientific language about the relationship of our sun to earth. They talk about the sun rising and setting, which is true from an earthbound observational point of view. Thats how it looks to us. Its not the reality of the situation however. Such observations are not intended to teach us cosmology, merely how things appeared to these ancient people, and indeed, how it appears still today to us. Scot spends considerable time situating Gen. 1-11 in its ANE context in some helpful ways as we shall see. He even recites my favorite dictuma text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean.
The second valuable principle is honesty, and again I fully agree. Fundamentalists react to science as if it were a contagious disease, and come up with fear-based theories about both the Bible and science, neither of which are helpful. It results in bad history and bad Bible interpretation and bad science too, the worst of both worlds.
I will certainly never forget the time I hitch-hiked back from the mountains of N.C. in 1969 with two flat landers, who insisted that the moon walk by Neal Armstrong and all those pictures of a beautiful round and revolving earth were a Hollywood stunt. When my friend Doug asked why they thought it was fake the answer was it says in the book of Revelations that the angels will stand on the four corners of the earth. Cant be round if it has four corners. Bless their hearts these folks did not know that apocalyptic literature isnt teaching cosmology, its teaching eschatology, and the whole point was the angels would round up people from all points on the compass, not that the earth was flat! Sometimes invincible ignorance is impossible to dialogue with.
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Adam and the Genome Part Nine – Patheos (blog)
Posted: at 4:36 am
I must admit, I am less willing to critique all the intelligent design folks the way Venema does at the end of his last chapter. I think there is far more to some of their arguments than some would allow. Some of these folks are actual scientists who are also people of faith and are struggling to make sense of both the Bible and evolution. Good for them. We need more, not less efforts to bring the two disciplines together for dialogue, and that does not include and assumption the science and its theories should go unchallenged, and that Bible interpretation should simply adapt to the brave new world of genetic truth.
The third principle Scot mentions is sensitivity to students of science, and again, I totally agree. I do not know if Scots claim on p. 104 that the number 1 reason kids leave the faith is because of questions about science, is true, but certainly some do. In light of the second half of this book, one should be equally concerned about students leaving the faith because someone told them that Adam and Eve did not exist as historical persons. The undercutting of the historical foundations of the Bible can be equally damaging to someones faith.
Scots fourth principle is also a useful one Scot says prima Scriptura is better than sola Scriptura, and I agree if we are talking about knowledge or truth in general. If we are talking salvation, sola Scriptura is closer to the truth.
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Looping the genome: How cohesin does the trick – Science Daily
Posted: at 4:36 am
Looping the genome: How cohesin does the trick Science Daily Defined genome-sequences that were previously located far apart are now next to each other and can interact to regulate gene expression. In Nature online this week, IMP-researchers publish data that support the existence of such a mechanism. First ... |
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Dante Labs Offers EUR 850 Whole Genome Sequencing and … – PR Newswire (press release)
Posted: at 4:36 am
NEW YORK, April 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Dante Labs announced today the offer of whole genome sequencing (WGS) and interpretation at only EUR 850 (ca. $900). While American individuals have been able to access WGS at $1,000, this innovation marks the first time Europeans can access WGS below EUR 1,000.
The sequencing includes bioinformatics analysis and interpretation, which are crucial to leveraging genetic information to make informed decisions about disease monitoring, prevention, nutrition, exercise, health monitoring and more.
WGS is run at 30X coverage, which makes the achievement even more impressive.
Dante Labs has chosen a select list of partners to develop DNA sequencing services that are "accessible to everyone ... By leveraging only the world's best genetic technologies, we ensure that our customers have access to the best in the world of genetics", says Dante Labs co-founder Andrea Riposati. "Genetics has seen tremendous developments in the last decade. Just think that the first whole genome sequencing cost north of $2.4 billion. For too long, only [a] few people could benefit from the impact of genetic research. It's healthcare, so I say it is important [that] everyone benefits from it. The key to empower[ing] everyone with high-quality, advanced genetics is to decrease the price. By integrating in the value chain, removing unnecessary intermediaries, developing synergies with strategic partners and leveraging economies of scale, we are able to offer whole genome sequencing at only EUR 850".
Dante Labs offers a suite of direct-to-consumer DNA tests, including BRCA1 and BRCA2 sequencing, whole exome sequencing and common hereditary cancer testing.
Media Contact: FrancescoPennelli Phone: +39.320.603.0072 Email: francesco@dantelabs.com
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Gene may hold key to hearing recovery – Medical Xpress – Medical Xpress
Posted: at 4:35 am
April 24, 2017 Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Researchers have discovered that a protein implicated in human longevity may also play a role in restoring hearing after noise exposure. The findings, where were published in the journal Scientific Reports, could one day provide researchers with new tools to prevent hearing loss.
The study reveals that a gene called Forkhead Box O3 (Foxo3) appears to play a role in protecting outer hair cells in the inner ear from damage. The outer hair cells act as a biological sound amplifier and are critical to hearing. When exposed to loud noises, these cells undergo stress. In some individuals, these cells are able to recover, but in others the outer hair cells die, permanently impairing hearing. While hearing aids and other treatments can help recovered some range of hearing, there is currently no biological cure for hearing loss.
"While more than a hundred genes have been identified as being involved in childhood hearing loss, little is known about the genes that regulate hearing recovery after noise exposure," said Patricia White, Ph.D., a research associate professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Department of Neuroscience and lead author of the study. "Our study shows that Foxo3 could play an important role in determining which individuals might be more susceptible to noise-induced hearing loss."
Approximately one-third of people who reach retirement age have some degree of hearing loss, primarily due to noise exposure over their lifetimes. The problem is even more acute in the military, with upwards of 60 percent of individuals who have been deployed in forward areas experiencing hearing loss, making it the most common disability for combat veterans.
Foxo3 is known to play an important role in cell's stress response. For example, in the cardiovascular system, Foxo3 helps heart cells stay healthy by clearing away debris when the cells are damaged. Additionally, people with a genetic mutation that confers higher levels of Foxo3 protein have been shown to live longer.
White and her team carried out a series of experiments involving knock-out mice who were genetically engineered to lack the Foxo3 gene. The researchers found that, compared to normal mice, these animals were unable to recover hearing after being exposed to loud noises. The team also observed that during the experiment the Foxo3 knock-out mice lost most of their outer hair cells. In the normal mice, outer hair cell loss was not significant.
"Discovering that Foxo3 was important for the survival of outer hair cells is a significant advance," says senior author Patricia White. "We are also excited about the results because Foxo3 is a transcription factor, which regulates the expression of many target genes. We are currently investigating what its targets might be in the inner ear, and how they could act to protect the ear from damage."
Explore further: Success of sensory cell regeneration raises hope for hearing restoration
More information: Felicia Gilels et al, Severe hearing loss and outer hair cell death in homozygous Foxo3 knockout mice after moderate noise exposure, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-01142-3
In an apparent first, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators have used genetic manipulation to regenerate auditory hair cells in adult mice. The research marks a possible advance in treatment of hearing loss ...
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Patients who complain they can't hear their friends at a noisy restaurant, but pass a hearing test in their doctor's office, may be describing hidden hearing loss.
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Hearing loss is a natural part of the aging process. But noise-induced hearing loss is on the rise.
Researchers have discovered that a protein implicated in human longevity may also play a role in restoring hearing after noise exposure. The findings, where were published in the journal Scientific Reports, could one day ...
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How AI Will Help Us Defeat Aging – Wall Street Pit
Posted: at 4:35 am
Aside from finding a cure for cancer, one of the most elusive battles that numerous scientists all over the world have been trying to win is the fight against aging.
So far, with mice as test subjects, anti-aging techniques include the use of blood plasma, protein adjustment, stem cells, gene manipulation and senescent cell removal. The objectives are also diverse. Some scientists are working on slowing down the process, while others want to reverse it. There are also those who want to stop the process altogether so human life can be extended indefinitely.
Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov director of the International Aging Research Portfolio (IARP) and U.K.-based charity group Biogerontology Research Foundation, also co-founder and CEO of bioinformatics firm Insilico Medicine is among those who believe that while aging happens naturally and is experienced by all living organisms, it doesnt necessarily have to mean that it should result in a degraded quality of life. In other words, Zhavoronkov is one of those who are advocating to classify aging as a disease an unnatural condition that can be treated and cured; a problem that can be solved. He is likewise a longevity enthusiast Zhavoronkov believes it is possible to extend the current longevity record beyond 122 years.
Insilico Medicine is one of the avenues through which Dr. Zhavoronkov intends to prove what he believes about aging and life span. As he told LEAF (Life Extension Advocacy Foundation) in an interview, the companys long-term goals are continuous improvement of human performance, and the prevention and cure of age-related diseases. And he believes the way to do it is by using A.I. to discover new drugs and develop biomarkers for aging.
Among Insilico Medicines more noteworthy projects is OncoFinder an algorithm thats used to analyze the activities of molecular pathways involved in growth, development, aging and cancer. In normal conditions, the algorithm can be used to determine which pathways lead to the development of conditions associated with aging. In pathological conditions, it can be used to predict which drugs will be most effective in treating diseases like cancer.
Theres also iPANDA algorithm which can be used to monitor changes in tissues and identify molecules that can target these changes. Together, these two algorithms help provide a better understanding on the changes that take place from a young state to an old state, as well as from a healthy state to a cancerous state.
Dr. Zhavoronkov is confident that in five years, they will be able to make breakthroughs in personalized medicine by being able to build comprehensive models that can be used as reference to predict, recommend and treat deviations from ideal healthy conditions. In other words, initiate interventions before disease has a chance to progress. And AI will play a major role in bringing this into fruition.
As he explained to LEAF: I think that applying AI to aging is the only way to bring it under the comprehensive medical control. Our AI ecosystem is comprised of multiple pipelines. With our drug discovery and biomarker development pipelines we can go after almost every disease and we even have several projects in ALS And since we are considering aging as a form of disease, many of the same algorithms are used to develop biomarkers and drugs to prevent and possibly even restore aging-associated damage.
Renowned futurist Peter Diamandis envisions that in the next one to two decades, AI will bring in demonetization of our major everyday expenses and therefore considerably bring down the cost of living, including health care. But before that happens, Dr. Zhavoronkov believes that AI can help bring about the cure for aging and maybe other notorious diseases like cancer.
If both scientists are proven correct, and we are certainly rooting for them and the field they represent, then we logically should start believing in the idea that AI really promises to progressively improve our lives. So instead of fantasizing how the development of this striking technology could bring the end of the world, maybe we should focus more on the scale that AI promises, and how it will help usher in the beginning of a new world.
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New ‘oldest person in world’ is 117, explains secret to longevity – KIRO – KIRO Seattle
Posted: at 4:35 am
by: Shelby Lin Erdman, Cox Media Group National Content Desk Updated: Apr 23, 2017 - 8:45 AM
Violet Mosse-Brown of Jamaica is officially the oldest living person in the world, at 117 years of age.
Mosse-Brown earned the title after the death of Emma Morano of Italy, who died earlier this week at 117 years, 137 days old.
>> Read more trending news
Mosse-Brown has a simple secret to her longevity.
Really and truly, when people ask what me eat and drink to live so long, I say to them that I eat everything, except pork and chicken, and I dont drink rum and them things, Mosse-Brown told the Jamaica Gleaner in a 2010 interview in honor of her 110th birthday.
Mosse-Brown was born in 1900 and still lives in the same house with family members. The home has been in their family for the past 200 years.
According to a biography posted by the Violet Mosse-Brown Foundation, started by her family, she was a sugarcane farmer for much of her life.
According to CNN, she is the last living subject of Queen Victoria from when many of the Caribbean islands were ruled by the British.
2017 Cox Media Group.
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Compound in aged cheese may prevent liver cancer, boost longevity – Medical News Today
Posted: at 4:35 am
A new study suggests that there may be a simple way to help reduce the risk of liver cancer and extend lifespan: consume mushrooms, soy, whole grains, aged cheese, and other foods rich in spermidine.
Researchers found that mice fed an oral supplement of spermidine were less likely to develop liver fibrosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) - the most common form of liver cancer - compared with rodents that did not receive the supplement.
Furthermore, the research team - from Texas A&M University in College Station - found that spermidine increased the lifespan of mice by as much as 25 percent.
Study co-author Leyuan Liu, Ph.D., of the Institute of Biosciences & Technology at Texas A&M, and colleagues recently reported their findings in the journal Cancer Research.
Spermidine is a polyamine - a compound that has at least two amino groups - that was originally isolated from sperm, hence its name. Spermidine is also naturally found in a variety of food products, including aged cheese, mushrooms, legumes, soy, whole grains, and corn.
Previous research has suggested that dietary spermidine may have health benefits. One study published in Nature Medicine last year, for example, associated oral supplementation of spermidine with better heart health and longevity in mice, while a more recent study linked the compound to reduced blood pressure.
For this latest study, Liu and colleagues investigated whether spermidine might have anti-cancer properties.
To reach their findings, the researchers gave an oral spermidine supplement to mice that were predisposed to develop HCC or liver fibrosis - that is, a buildup of scar tissue in the liver that can lead to liver cancer.
Not only were the mice less likely to develop HCC or liver fibrosis than rodents that were not given the spermidine supplement, but they were also found to live much longer.
"It's a dramatic increase in lifespan of animal models, as much as 25 percent," says Liu. "In human terms, that would mean that instead of living to about 81 years old, the average American could live to be over 100."
The authors note that the 25 percent increase in lifespan was only seen in mice that had lifelong spermidine supplementation; rodents that were given the supplement later in life experienced a 10 percent increase in longevity.
In previous research, Liu and team found that lack of autophagy - the process by which cells "eat" their own debris - contributed to cancer development.
In this study, the researchers found that the benefits of spermidine diminished in the absence of a protein called MAP1S, which is known to trigger autophagy. As such, the team speculates that the cancer-protective effects of the compound are down to its enhancement of MAP1S-related autophagy.
Further studies are needed to determine the safety and efficacy of spermidine supplementation in humans, but the team believes that it could offer significant health benefits.
"Just think: if we added spermidine to every bottle of beer, it might balance out the alcohol and help protect the liver," says Liu.
"It's still early, but perhaps one day this approach will provide a novel strategy to prolong lifespans, prevent or reverse liver fibrosis, and prevent, delay, or cure hepatocellular carcinoma in humans."
Leyuan Liu, Ph.D.
Learn how having children may increase lifespan.
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Compound in aged cheese may prevent liver cancer, boost longevity - Medical News Today
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Eczema treatment: Allergy link KEY to beating painful skin condition affecting 15m Brits – Express.co.uk
Posted: at 4:34 am
It is important for both patients and healthcare professionals to understand the connection between atopic eczema and allergy
Amena Warner
Up to 15 million adults and children are suffering from eczema in the UK.
The dry, itchy skin rash costs the NHS almost 170 million each year.
Eczema is common in babies but also affects older children and adults.
Researchers believe there is a vital link between allergies and developing eczema.
Amena Warner, Head of Clinical Services at Allergy UK, said: It is important for both patients and healthcare professionals to understand the connection between atopic eczema and allergy.
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Eczema is a common symptom which can be triggered by irritants and allergens as well as from a genetic tendency of dry skin. As well as a symptom, it can also be the gateway to allergic sensitisation, so when the body is exposed to that allergen there is a potential for a reaction.
Experts say its important to protect the skin barrier to help reduce the risk of allergen sensitivity.
If you have an intense itch or areas of dry, sensitive, red or inflamed skin, youre advised to see a doctor.
Warner said: Having an accurate and timely diagnosis is important for effective management of eczema and maintaining the skin barrier.
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Resist the itch - Eczema is almost always itchy no matter where it occurs on the body and although it may be tempting to scratch affected areas of the skin, this should be avoided as much as possible
Around 1.7 million school children are already suffering eczema in the UK.
Its estimated between 50-70 per cent of children with early onset eczema are sensitised to at least one allergen.
Natalie Newman, mother of Calum, aged 5, said early diagnosis can significantly reduce suffering.
She explained: Calums multiple allergies started from a really early age. His eczema was one of the key indicators that something wasnt right.
It took a long time for us to get a diagnosis and Calum now has to avoid 15 foods plus reduce exposure to multiple airborne triggers. His eczema still causes him a lot of distress when he experiences a bad flare up.
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I cannot stress how important it is for new parents to track their childs symptoms and discuss them with their GP.
Eczema isnt just a painful and irritating condition, it can also affect self-confidence.
Over half (52 per cent) of adults have head and neck eczema, while 50 per cent have it on their hands, all areas that are easily visible.
Allergy UK recommends using emollient on skin even when eczema isnt currently present, to keep in moisture and prevent any future flare ups.
You can also try cutting out certain foods like cows milk and wheat to help with the condition.
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Eczema treatment: Allergy link KEY to beating painful skin condition affecting 15m Brits - Express.co.uk
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