Prevalence and rate of diagnosis of allergic rhinitis in Europe. V. Bauchau, S.R. Durham. #ERS Journals Ltd 2004. ABSTRACT: To measure the prevalence of allergic rhinitis among European adults and the proportion of undiagnosed subjects, a two-step, cross-sectional, populationbased survey in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK was undertaken.Step one of the study involved screening for allergic rhinitis by telephone interview, based on history of symptoms and/or self-awareness of the condition.Step two undertook confirmation of allergic rhinitis in a subset of the subjects screened positive; this was performed by a clinical diagnosis conducted in three to five clinical centres per country, including specific immunoglobulin E tests and a disease-specific questionnaire.A total of 9,646 telephone interviews were conducted between February and April 2001. Self-awareness of allergic rhinitis was reported by 19% of the subjects. Physicianbased diagnosis of allergic rhinitis was reported by 13% of the subjects. In step two, 725 clinical assessments were conducted between May and August 2001. A total of 411 of patients, who underwent step two, had investigator-confirmed allergic rhinitis. Among patients with investigator-confirmed allergic rhinitis, 45% had not reported a previous diagnosis by a physician. Prevalence of subjects with clinically confirmable allergic rhinitis estimated by combining step one and step two data ranged from 17% in Italy to 29% in Belgium with an overall value of 23%.This large-scale study confirms that allergic rhinitis has a high prevalence in western Europe and is frequently undiagnosed.

The classic types of SAR/PAR cannot be used interchangeably with the new classification of intermittent/persistent, as they do not represent the same stratum of disease. There is also evidence that the persistent type describes a distinct group with characteristics that differentiates them from intermittent AR. These results support the validity of the new ARIA classification.

Early-onset severe eczema in infancy was associated with HR-IgE-FS. Clinical implications Food allergies should be routinely assessed in infants with moderate or severe eczema. Capsule summary In eczematous infants, the earlier the age of onset, and the greater the severity of eczema, the greater the frequency of associated high levels of IgE-FS.

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Robertsonian (Rb) translocation is a common chromosomal rearrangement in the house mouse. In free-living populations, 79 fusions with different combinations of chromosomes 1 to 18 have been found in some 45 populations. An updated list of these fusions is presented and analysed in order to reveal the possible processes by which the fusions spread within or among populations. A widespread hypothesis is that when two populations share the same fusion, it can be assumed that they have a common ancestor. This can serve as the basis for the use of the cladistic methods. While I present such an analysis on the updated list of Rbs, I also point to the problems associated with it in this case because many fusions have multiple origins and exchanges of Rbs between populations are frequent.I have tried to use a different approach, based on a critical and quantitative evaluation of the hypothesis of common ancestry. Assuming that the 153 possible fusions have an equal probability of occurrence, I give the formula to compute the probability that populations share a given number of fusions by chance alone. Only when this probability is lower than a chosen level (say 5%) can the populations be inferred to have a non-independent origin (i.e. they have a common ancestor or they have exchanged chromosomes by introgression). This probability measure is then used as a distance estimate to show the relationship between all the R b populations. This analysis suggests that although some Rbs must have occurred more than once, most of the populations have nonindependent origins. Almost all the populations from northern Africa to Belgium and Germany appear to have close karyotopic relationships and form a major group. Clearly independent R b populations are mainly found in the periphery of this major group, for example in Scotland, Denmark and Spain. 'Chromosomal' flow between R b populations appears to be a very important process.