J Allergy Clin Immunol
September 2025
Recent advancements in genomics and "omic" technologies have ushered in a transformative era referred to as personalized or precision medicine. This innovative approach considers the unique genetic profiles of individuals, along with a range of variability factors, to devise tailored disease treatments and prevention strategies that cater to the distinct needs of each patient. Although the terms personalized medicine and precision medicine are frequently utilized interchangeably, it is essential to delineate the subtle distinctions between them.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpeech and language difficulties are a core feature of the CLCN4-related neurodevelopmental condition, but these have not been well described. Here we systematically phenotype speech and language in 13 participants (10 female, aged 1 year 10 months-41 years 10 months) with pathogenic CLCN4 variants (12 missense de novo, 1 premature stop codon maternal inheritance). Speech, language, and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) methods were examined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A short-course pre-seasonal subcutaneous injection of PQ Grass is clinically effective for the treatment of allergic rhinitis, though its mechanism remains unclear. The aim of the study was to interrogate immunological mechanisms induced by PQ Grass conventional and extended regimens.
Methods: A RDBPC exploratory field study involving participants that either received injections of PQ Grass with a cumulative dose of 27,600 SU conventional (six once weekly injections) or extended regimen (three once weekly injections followed by three once monthly injections) or placebo containing microcrystalline tyrosine (MCT) (placebo + MCT) or saline (placebo) was performed.
Purpose: The Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) Gene Curation Expert Panels have historically focused on specific organ systems or phenotypes; thus, the ClinGen Syndromic Disorders Gene Curation Expert Panel (SD-GCEP) was formed to address an unmet need.
Methods: The SD-GCEP applied ClinGen's framework to evaluate the clinical validity of genes associated with rare syndromic disorders. A total of 111 gene-disease relationships (GDRs) associated with 100 genes spanning the clinical spectrum of syndromic disorders were curated.
Genetics is a rapidly evolving field with the potential to achieve improved health outcomes through precision medicine. People with intellectual disability have asked to know more about genetic conditions that they may have, but require education to build their genetic literacy, thereby empowering them to make informed healthcare decisions. Key to this is ensuring students with intellectual disability can access and participate in genetics education at school.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAsthma is a complex, heterogeneous disease characterised by clinical phenotypes demonstrating distinct and overlapping immunological mechanisms, classified into type-2 high and type-2 low asthma endotypes. Both allergic and eosinophilic non-allergic asthma are driven through an underlying type-2 high-endotype, which can be targeted using therapeutic approaches such as allergen-specific immunotherapy (AIT) for allergic asthma and biologics. AIT demonstrates efficacy for the treatment of allergic asthma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Patients with developmental and epileptic encephalopathies (DEEs) have multiple comorbidities and high healthcare needs. Whether health services meet the needs of this patient population and their families is not well understood. We explored caregiver perspectives on their child's health service use, satisfaction with health services, and priorities for improvement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenet Med
April 2025
Purpose: People with intellectual disability inequitably access high-quality genetic health care. However, they are keen to understand genetic health care and recommend that clinicians need education on delivering more inclusive care and that multimodal genetic health literacy resources should be coproduced.
Methods: Our inclusive research team applied best-practice coproduction principles to deliver a suite of resources, the GeneEQUAL Toolkit.
Background: While serial sampling of glioma tissue is rarely performed prior to recurrence, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is an underutilized longitudinal source of candidate glioma biomarkers for understanding therapeutic impacts. However, the impact of key variables to consider in longitudinal CSF samples for monitoring biomarker discovery, including anatomical location and post-surgical changes, remains unknown.
Methods: Aptamer-based proteomics was performed on 147 CSF samples from 74 patients; 71 of whom had grade 2-4 astrocytomas or grade 2-3 oligodendrogliomas.
J Prim Care Community Health
January 2025
Introduction/objectives: Individually rare, rare diseases are collectively common resulting in frequent health system use. Navigating the health system persists as a challenge. Primary care provides longitudinal contact with the health system and is placed to provide integrated rare-disease-care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Peanut allergy (PA) is one of the most prevalent food allergies with a lack of favorable safety/efficacy treatment. A cucumber mosaic virus-like particle expressing peanut allergen component Ara h 2 (VLP Peanut) has been developed as a novel therapeutic approach for PA.
Objective: We assessed the tolerogenic properties and reactivity of VLP Peanut.
Arch Dis Child
March 2025
Objective: Parents and caregivers of children with neurological conditions express interest in new and developing treatments and trials; however, they have limited knowledge of, and access to, reliable information. This study aims to empower and equip decision-making and support communication in the application of advanced neurotherapeutics and personalised medicine, covering gene therapy, stem cell therapy, neurostimulation and neuroimmunotherapies.
Design: A suite of online psychoeducational resources has been created and evaluated to establish implementation success.
The first-ever Undiagnosed Hackathon was a groundbreaking event held by the Wilhelm Foundation, the Karolinska Undiagnosed Disease Program, and PhenoTips in collaboration with UDNI to solve medical mysteries and advance diagnostics for undiagnosed rare diseases. Nearly 100 healthcare professionals and researchers from 28 countries participated, working intensively for 48 hours to diagnose 10 families with undiagnosed rare diseases. This innovative approach to precision diagnostics highlighted the power of international, multidisciplinary collaboration and patient partnership, yielding promising results for patients seeking answers and benefiting the entire rare diseases community.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRare diseases are recognized as a global public health priority. A timely and accurate diagnosis is a critical enabler for precise and personalized health care. However, barriers to rare disease diagnoses are especially steep for those from historically underserved communities, including low- and middle-income countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrobiol Resour Announc
July 2024
is a pathobiont of humans that is often found in abundance at sites of mucosal inflammation as well as within malignant tumors. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of strain JM503A, which is a genetically tractable clinical isolate derived from a human odontogenic abscess specimen.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDev Med Child Neurol
December 2024
Aim: To investigate clinicians' psychosocial experiences navigating interdisciplinary care for children with severe neurological impairment (SNI), for example children with a developmental epileptic encephalopathy; secondarily, to identify preferences for future interventions to support clinicians caring for children with SNI.
Method: We conducted a qualitative descriptive study with interdisciplinary clinicians by using a purposeful sampling recruitment strategy. Twenty-four participants with expertise caring for children with SNI completed in-depth, semi-structured interviews.
Unlabelled: While serial sampling of glioma tissue is rarely performed prior to recurrence, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is an underutilized longitudinal source of candidate glioma biomarkers for understanding therapeutic impacts. However, the impact of key variables to consider in longitudinal CSF samples, including anatomical location and post-surgical changes, remains unknown. To that end, pre- versus post-resection intracranial CSF samples were obtained at early (1-16 days; n=20) or delayed (86-153 days; n=11) timepoints for patients with glioma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHealth Expect
June 2024
Introduction: Advanced therapies offer unprecedented opportunities for treating rare neurological disorders (RNDs) in children. However, health literacy, perceptions and understanding of novel therapies need elucidation across the RND community. This study explored healthcare professionals' and carers' perspectives of advanced therapies in childhood-onset RNDs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAround 60% of individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) remain undiagnosed after comprehensive genetic testing, primarily of protein-coding genes. Increasingly, large genome-sequenced cohorts are improving our ability to discover new diagnoses in the non-coding genome. Here, we identify the non-coding RNA as a novel syndromic NDD gene.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Child Health Care
September 2025
Parents of a child with a chronic illness can experience greater distress than the average population, yet little is understood about differences between illness groups. This cross-sectional survey study aimed to compare parents' psychological distress and perceived wellbeing across five chronic illnesses. Parents from one Australian pediatric hospital completed the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale and seven purpose-designed items about their wellbeing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Timely detection of neurodevelopmental and neurological conditions is crucial for early intervention. Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in children and Parkinson's disease (PD) manifests in speech disturbances that may be exploited for diagnostic screening using recorded speech signals. We were motivated to develop an accurate yet computationally lightweight model for speech-based detection of SLI and PD, employing novel feature engineering techniques to mimic the adaptable dynamic weight assignment network capability of deep learning architectures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Local allergic rhinitis (LAR) is defined by chronic nasal symptoms, absence of atopy, positive nasal allergen challenge (NAC) and a good response to subcutaneous allergen immunotherapy (SCIT). We sought to investigate SCIT capacity to induce local and systemic blocking antibodies in LAR patients.
Methods: A RDBPC study of grass SCIT was performed, with participants receiving either SCIT (Group A; n = 10) or placebo (Group B; n = 14) in the first 6 months.