Crime may be affected by the sniffling of potential criminals which may be affected by the amounts of pollen in the air, which might explain all sorts of things, suggests this new study: “More sneezing, less crime? Health shocks and the market for offenses,” Aaron Chalfin, Shooshan Danagoulian, and Monica Deza, Journal of Health Economics, […]
Tag: allergy
Allergy to a Partially Extraterrestrial Object
A touching allergy, an encounter of an unusual kind (an encounter of a third kind, according to some classifications), made its way into a medical journal report: “Contact allergy to a meteorite: An interesting consequence of nickel allergy,” L. Malinauskiene, Contact Dermatitis, epub 2018. The author, at Vilnius University, Lithuania, reports: “A 28-year-old male patient […]
Feather Duvet Lung Danger
If you were compiling a compendium of everyday household items which can pose a danger, stepladders, drain-cleaning chemicals, and hot saucepans might immediately spring to mind. Feather duvets would quite probably be considerably further down the list. But don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by their lightweight, soft and fluffy demeanour – […]
Involuntary Hippophagia (2): Horsemeat and Hamsters
Improbable readers may be familiar with the Pork-Cat Syndrome (a link between allergic sensitivity to pork meat and cat epithelia), details of which were first published in 1994. Perhaps less well known though is the Horsemeat-Hamster Syndrome, which could have implications for those who have been exposed to the current UK outbreak of Involuntary Hippophagia. […]
Pork-Cat Syndrome, and Posthumus news thereof
This is one of the earliest medical reports on record about Pork-Cat Syndrome: “The pork-cat syndrome: effect of sensitization to cats on sensitization to pork meat. Apropos of a case“, [article in French] M. Drouet, M.G. Lauret and A. Sabbah, Allergie et Immunologie, 1994 Oct;26(8):305-6. The authors, at Laboratoire d’Immuno-Allergologie, CHU, Angers, France, report: “A […]
Cat color and allergies?
Investigator G.J. Reynolds writes: Here’s a nice little set of papers on how the color of a cat affects its owners allergies. First, a 2000 abstract in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunologyestablishing that owners of lighter-colored cats have fewer symptoms than owners of darker-colored cats [one of the authors, Clifford Bassett, is pictured here in lieu […]
Cockroach Under-the-Tongue Safety Study
Investigator Mark Natter alerts us to an ongoing study by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID): Sublingual Cockroach Safety Study (SCSS) This study is ongoing, but not recruiting participants. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00434421 Purpose: Immunotherapy may help reduce symptoms of allergy and asthma. Problems concerning compliance and adverse events with subcutaneous allergen immunotherapy […]