Research Reinforces Potential Allergies-Glioma Connection

R esearch reported in 2011 from several American and European universities supports the decades-old hypothesis that people with allergies have a low incidence of glioma: up to four times lower than that of non-allergy sufferers in some studies. First identifi ed two decades ago, the inverse relationship between allergies and glioma " is one of the most consistent associations in the brain tumor literature, " wrote Although past studies have failed to confi rm the inverse allergy association in meningioma and acoustic neuroma, they have confi rmed it for glial cells. The most recent study, published in the Oct. 18 JNCI , found a statistically significant inverse association between glioma and borderline-elevated total immunoglob-ulin E (IgE), a biomarker often found in allergy sufferers. Healthy participants from four cohorts contributed blood samples well before brain tumors developed, suggesting that any chemotherapy-or tumor-induced immune alterations " were unlikely to cause the observed changes in IgE, " explained study coauthor and Brown University epidemiology professor Dominique Michaud, Ph.D. The fi ndings were consistent with those of case – control studies, Michaud wrote with Imperial College School of Public Health researcher Federico Calboli, Ph.D., along with a team from Harvard Medical School. although the observed inverse allergy – glioma relationship is not yet clinically relevant , " it may represent a serendipitous