Differences between biological sex, gender identity, and their impact on health may have significant implications for the prevention, screening, diagnosis, and treatment of several diseases, including allergies. Asthma, allergic rhinitis (AR), atopic dermatitis (AD), and allergic conjunctivitis (AC) have different prevalences and different risk factors in infancy. Although boys present allergies more often in childhood, it quickly changes during girls’ sexual development, leading to lifelong female predominance of allergic diseases. This can be explained by the influence of sexual hormones, different lifestyles adopted by men and women, microbiota diversity, diet distinctions, professional options, and adherence to treatment, among others. Gender-related aspects should become essential parameters in allergology to diagnostic and therapeutic stratification, associated with molecular, genetic, and epigenetic patterns. Longitudinal studies would be interesting to evaluate possible mechanisms underlying these differences in prevalence. Sex- and gender-specific observations beyond 14 years of age are scarce and further allergic multimorbidity studies in different populations, especially in adults, are necessary.

There are few published studies on prevalence of allergic rhinitis in preschool children. The aims of this study were to verify the prevalence, clinical characteristics, and treatment of allergic rhinitis (AR) symptoms in the first year of life adding supplementary questions to the EISL instrument. A cross-sectional study used Phase III EISL written questionnaire in addition to modified allergic rhinitis ISAAC questions. One thousand and three parents of infants answered the questionnaire: 484 (48.3%) had at least one sneezing, or a runny or blocked nose episodes without cold or flu in the first year of life. A quarter of infants had recurrent wheezing (≥3 episodes) and more frequent in the presence of AR symptoms. Physician diagnosis of AR and the use of intranasal steroids and both antihistamines and intranasal steroids were more common among those infants with AR symptoms. The prevalence of AR symptoms was high and starting early in life.

Human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV) is a major etiologic agent of pediatric respiratory infections. Genetic variability of its glycoprotein G enables HRSV to evade the immune response and determines its seasonal dissemination. This study reports genetic variability and clinical profiles of HRSV-infected patients from Southern Brazil. Seventy positive samples, 78% type A and 22% type B, were analyzed. Of the patients (median age, 6 months; interquartile range, 2-11 years), 16% had co-morbidities and 17% developed severe disease. The ON1 HRSV genotype first appeared in 2012, and patients infected with this genotype showed an increased tendency to develop severe disease.

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