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Food allergies have been increasing dramatically across the developed world for more than 30 years. For instance, as many as 8% of children in the U.S. now experience potentially lethal immune system responses to such foods as milk, tree nuts, fish and shellfish. But scientists have struggled to explain why that is. A prevailing theory has been that food allergies arise because of an absence of natural pathogens such as parasites in the modern environment, which in turn makes the part of the immune system that evolved to deal with such natural threats hypersensitive to certain foods.
In a paper published Jan. 14 in the journal
Pandemic Prepared
Scientists, like English teachers, always ask “What?” then “Why?” First observe a pattern of metaphors in a novel, of a phenomenon in nature then investigate the reason for it. Months into the coronavirus pandemic, the majority of published research was still answering “what” questions: What age is at greatest risk of hospitalization? What sex is most likely to recover? But when it came to
why these differences were observed and how to use that information to develop better treatments the Iwasaki lab at the Yale School of Medicine was uniquely poised to find answers. Their latest research revealed sex differences in the immune response that might explain differences in COVID-19 disease progression.