The Journal of asthma : official journal of the Association for the Care of Asthma •
: Studies concerning asthma in Lebanon investigated environmental and personal factors but none of them took into account the effect of nutritional habits. Our objective is to assess the effect of nutritional habits on asthma and allergies in Lebanese children aged 3-16 years old. : This is a case-control study, conducted between December 2015 and April 2016. The Food Frequency Questionnaire was composed of 16 semi-quantitative questions covering different food categories. : This study included 1,276 children (976 healthy and 300 asthmatic children). Eating dairy products less than twice a week, 3-6 times per week and daily were significantly and inversely associated with asthma, as compared to never eating dairy products ( = 0.02, ORa = 0.285, CI 0.099-0.821; < 0.001, ORa = 0.140, CI 0.052-0.378 and < 0.001, ORa = 0.161, CI 0.061-0.422), whereas eating red meat daily compared to never was associated with asthma significantly ( = 0.037, ORa = 2.051, CI 1.046-4.024). Eating nuts less than twice weekly as compared to never was significantly and inversely associated with asthma ( = 0.035, ORa = 0.597, CI 0.369-0.965). The age categories 7-10 and 11-13 years were significantly associated with asthma as compared to the 3-6 years category ( < 0.001, ORa = 3.359, CI 1.869-6.038 and = 0.008, ORa = 2.191, CI 1.228-3.909, respectively), while male gender was significantly more prone to asthma ( = 0.014, ORa = 0.686, CI 0.507-0.926). : Knowing the correlation between nutritional habits and asthma is important to promote healthy eating. Educational programs for parents about healthy food and breastfeeding encouragement is warranted.
Trant JF, Jain N, Mazzuca DM, McIntosh JT, Fan B, et al.
Nanoscale •
Nanoassemblies presenting multivalent displays of biologically active carbohydrates are of significant interest for a wide array of biomedical applications ranging from drug delivery to immunotherapy. In this study, glycodendron-lipid hybrids were developed as a new and tunable class of dendritic amphiphiles. A modular synthesis was used to prepare dendron-lipid hybrids comprising distearylglycerol and 0 through 4th generation polyester dendrons with peripheral protected amines. Following deprotection of the amines, an isothiocyanate derivative of C-linked α-galactose (α-Gal) was conjugated to the dendron peripheries, affording amphiphiles with 1 to 16 α-Gal moieties. Self-assembly in water through a solvent exchange process resulted in vesicles for the 0 through 2 generation systems and micelles for the 3 and 4 generation systems. The critical aggregation concentrations decreased with increasing dendron generation, suggesting that the effects of increasing molar mass dominated over the effects of increasing the hydrophilic weight fraction. The binding of the assemblies to Griffonia simplicifolia Lectin I (GSL 1), a protein with specificity for α-Gal was studied by quantifying the binding of fluorescently labeled assemblies to GSL 1-coated beads. It was found that binding was enhanced for amphiphiles containing higher generation dendrons. Despite their substantial structural differences with the natural ligands for the CD1d receptor, the glycodendron-lipid hybrids were capable of stimulating invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, a class of innate-like T cells that recognize lipid and glycolipid antigens presented by CD1d and that are implicated in a wide range of diseases and conditions including but not limited to infectious diseases, diabetes and cancer.
