Atopica at the Third International Ragweed Conference

The 3rd International Ragweed conference took place in Rho (Milan) on 3-4 April, was jointly organized with the “Ambrosia day 2014- Ragweed allergy: 15 years of prevention” and focused on the harmful effects of the invasive weed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia.

 

 

 The conference was chaired by Maira Bonini (Local Local Health Authority Milan 1; Italian Association of Aerobiology - Italian Monitoring Network in Aerobiology [A.I.A.-R.I.M.A.]) and Tamas Komives (President of the International Ragweed Society) and addressed many different topics, including ecological and management aspects of ragweed, meteorological aspects of pollen movement, pollen allergenicity and related health issues.

Atopica was present at the conference and some of the partners, including the project coordinator, Michelle Epstein, after giving a brief overview of the project, presented some of the preliminary results obtained so far.

The effect of climate change on Ambrosia in Europe was addressed by Jonathan Storkey (Rothamsted Research) and by Lynda Laguel (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) whose talk focused on the modelling of the concentration of Ambrosia pollen over Europe.

From a clinical point of view, Michelle Epstein (Medizinische Universitaet Wien) discussed the aspects of allergenicity of Ambrosia pollen in mice, while Ivana Banic (Children's Hospital SREBRNJAK Croatia University) talked about the risk for de novo sensitisation to ragweed in Croatian children.