Word: wedner
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...skin during preening, a full-time preoccupation of most cats. As a result, houses full of cat hair and dander cause uncomfortable reactions in 25% of allergy sufferers. "Some 70% of cat owners allow their cats to sleep with them in their beds," says Dr. Joseph Wedner, chief of allergy and clinical immunology at Washington University. "There's no better way to make someone allergic to a cat or to make a cat allergy worse than lying there with a cat pressed up against your face." Even the innocent suffer. One example is Dr. Arthur Torre, a Fairfield, N.J., allergist...
Despite energetic research into the nature and mechanics of the allergic immune response, and some improvement in treatment, no easy, surefire cure is in sight. Without question, says Washington University's Wedner, "the very best way of curing an allergy is to take away the allergen. No one is allergic to something that isn't there." In a few cases, that prescription is simple. Sufferers can get rid of the cat, for example, or avoid obviously allergenic foods and switch to nonlatex (but more expensive) gloves...
Dander and dung can apparently be brought under control -- although in each case the victory may not be worth the trouble. In the midst of experiments with cat dander, allergist Wedner made a serendipitous discovery. "If you wash cats once a month," he says, "then over a period of three to eight months they will stop making Fel d1. In essence, you've created a nonallergenic cat." To nail down his findings, Wedner now has his cat-owning patients experimenting with the technique on their pets...
...Chicago and New York City, the number of hospitalizations for acute attacks in chil dren under age four has surged. "A black child in the inner city has a 13- to 16-fold better chance of dying from asthma than his white suburban counterpart," says Dr. James Wedner, an allergist at Washington University in St. Louis. Poor or uninsured asthmatics often get medical attention only on a crash basis at the hospital emergency room. They receive no treatment for the underlying condition, so their lungs deteriorate...
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