von Mutius Erika
University Children's Hospital, Munich, Germany.
J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2004 Mar;113(3):373-9; quiz 380. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2003.12.040.
Many decades after the first descriptions of hay fever in the 19th century, we still struggle with the formation of a cogent conception embracing all the many fragments of insight into the various aspects of allergic and asthmatic diseases. Although in daily practice we can grasp and allocate most of the clinical manifestations, in research the fundamental structures are only in part recognized. We therefore presume that the underlying mechanisms are complex and multifaceted. We have explored in countless directions while branching into ever more detailed analyses of phenomena, all of which are associated with the conditions of interest. But how can we rearrange these pieces to advance toward a broader understanding of asthma and allergies? Epidemiology as a scientific tool to study the occurrence, the natural course, and the determinants of a condition in various sociocultural environments might contribute to the edifice of such a scaffold. This review does not intend to present a comprehensive digest of the relevant literature: the reader can refer to other "state of the art" reviews. The intention is to discuss some conceptual cornerstones and to illustrate them with a few examples.
在19世纪首次描述花粉热后的几十年里，我们仍在努力形成一个有说服力的概念，以涵盖对过敏性和哮喘性疾病各个方面的诸多见解片段。尽管在日常实践中我们能够掌握并分类大多数临床表现，但在研究中，基本结构仅得到部分认识。因此，我们推测其潜在机制是复杂且多方面的。我们已经在无数方向上进行了探索，同时深入到对各种现象的更详细分析中，所有这些现象都与相关病症有关。但是，我们如何重新整理这些碎片，以更全面地理解哮喘和过敏呢？流行病学作为一种科学工具，用于研究某种病症在各种社会文化环境中的发生情况、自然病程和决定因素，可能有助于构建这样一个框架。本综述并非旨在全面总结相关文献：读者可参考其他“最新进展”综述。其目的是讨论一些概念基石，并通过几个例子加以说明。
