The October 1st issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine included a research article that caught my attention because of the unusual topic:  microplastic substances in human stool.  With the news in recent years about microscopic particles of plastic being found inside plastic water bottles, I was curious about whether the patients who were studied […]

In March, I wrote that the view of the role of intestinal bacteria in allergic diseases has evolved from disdain and scorn in the 1990s to current ‘rational exuberance’ (to paraphrase a term from Alan Greenspan—former chairperson of the Federal Reserve).  Health care professionals and scientists refer to the intestinal bacteria as the ‘microbiome’—the community […]

    As I attended the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Annual Meeting this month in ‘warmer’ Orlando, I realized that it has been 25 years of my going to their national meetings.  The first one I went to was in March 1993 during my fellowship training. The meeting that year was in Chicago—the last […]