Editorial: Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

This issue of the Egyptian Journal of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology is inaugurated by a brief report from the Pediatric Allergy and Immunology Unit of Ain Shams University, Egypt on its approach and attitude towards the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges that its staff members are meeting towards control of its morbidity in their patients. The unit is carrying several research works on the phenotypic features of the disease and some of them are currently under publication .
The review article of this issue is about wheat allergy. The authors stress that management of IgE mediated wheat allergy is mainly based on avoiding its allergens, careful reading of market labels, and written instruction to deal with anaphylactic reaction. Four original articles were carefully selected after peer-reviewing by international and local experts in the field. The health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is the focus of attention in two of them. A group of Egyptian children with atopic dermatitis and their parents underwent a comprehensive HRQOL evaluation and many problems were thus identified. Another article thought to outline the HRQOL defects in juvenile idiopathic arthritis and concluded that physical disability and pain as well as social drawbacks are major aspects that need intervention to help those children lead a normal life. In the third article, the authors sought to investigate the effect of BclI Polymorphism of NR3C1 gene on asthma phenotypes in Egyptian children. Indeed, exploring the local genetic background of this expanding problem will help design better intervention strategies. The last article presents the results of a work conducted on a group of obese asthmatic children aiming to enumerate the regulatory T cells (Tregs) among their lymphocytes. The authors concluded that Tregs are increased in the asthmatic children whether obese or not. However, the absence of an obese non-asthmatic group is a limiting point in the study .
An English/Arabic glossary that contains a list of allergy and immunology relevant terms and expressions is included as well as a collection of abstracts from recent international publications in allergy/immunology. I would like to remind you that the WAO e-letter (News & Notes) is displayed on our website both in English and Arabic on monthly basis. On our homepage, you will find links to the World Allergy Organization (WAO) website and the WAO online journal. I encourage you indeed to submit your articles to this very well peer-reviewed journal .
Please get the latest updates on ESPAI activities from http://www.espai-eg.org/scientific.htm and from our society’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/TheESPAI. Hopefully, our 16th International Congress will be held in March 2021 and will probably be fully virtual unless the pandemic comes to an end with God’s will.
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