Impact of age, sex, and urban environment on allergen-specific IgE profiles to grass pollen components: a cross-sectional study in Northern Italy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Asthma and rhino-conjunctivitis are frequently triggered by sensitization to airborne allergens, particularly grass pollens. This study aimed to assess whether age, sex, and living environment influence allergen-specific IgE responses to grass pollen components, using a molecular diagnostic approach. METHODS: A total of 772 patients referred to the Allergology outpatient clinic for suspected grass pollen allergy were enrolled. Allergen-specific IgE levels were measured using the ImmunoCAP ISAC microarray. Patients were stratified into nine groups based on age, sex, and city of residence (Milan, Pavia, and surrounding rural/suburban areas). Sensitization to nine grass pollen components (Cyn d 1, Phl p 1, Phl p 2, Phl p 4, Phl p 5, Phl p 6, Phl p 7, Phl p 11, and Phl p 12) was analyzed. RESULTS: Sensitization patterns varied by sex, age group, and place of residence. Male patients showed higher IgE positivity for Phl p 2 and Phl p 6. Overall, the highest sensitization rates were observed in adolescents and in patients living in Milan. Cyn d 1, Phl p 1, Phl p 4, and Phl p 5 showed widespread sensitization across all groups, though rates were higher in males and in urban areas. CONCLUSIONS: This cross-sectional study highlights that demographic and environmental factors - particularly sex, age, and urban living - can influence IgE sensitization to grass pollen components. These findings emphasize the relevance of molecular diagnostics in understanding allergy epidemiology and support the hypothesis that environmental exposure, including air pollution, may affect sensitization profiles.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Direct model labels (unvalidated)
Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.
| Model arm | Categories | Study design | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gemma | no category Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Observational | low |
| gpt | no category Domain: not available · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Observational | low |
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedLabeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".