In Brief Medical News ----------------------------------------------------------------- Childhood allergies linked to parents Sixty to 80 percent of infants whose parents suffer from hayfever, eczema or asthma are at high risk for developing food allergies. Those children might benefit from avoiding cow's milk, eggs and peanuts early in life, say pediatricians at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Allergies passed down from parent to child can lead to abnormal immune responses such as wheezing, asthma, nasal congestion, eczema and hives. In extreme cases, the reactions can be life-threatening. According to Hugh Sampson, professor of pediatrics at the Children's Center, allergies to food proteins may become progressively worse following each exposure. Parents should consider not introducing young, high-risk children to the most common offenders, he says. He recommends excluding cow's milk from the diet of high-risk infants for the first year of life, eggs for the first 18 months and peanuts for the first three years. That includes foods like pudding and peanut butter, made from these allergy-causing foods. "Once a person has become sensitized, consumption of only milligrams of a food may be sufficient to induce an allergic reaction. As little as half a peanut can cause a dangerous response, so it's best not to become sensitized at all," says Sampson. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Other News ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hopkins schools rank well in respective disciplines The schools of Medicine and Engineering each received good news in the latest annual survey of graduate schools published in the March 17 issue of U.S. News & World Report. The School of Medicine received the second highest ranking in the survey of 125 research-oriented medical schools, second to Harvard and just ahead of Yale. Hopkins ranked first in the specialties of drug and alcohol abuse and geriatrics and second in AIDS research, internal medicine, pediatrics and women's health. The rankings, which include all 125 U.S. medical schools, are based on reputation among medical school deans and faculty, and directors of intern-residency programs, as well as the amount of research money awarded by the National Institutes of Health, average medical school admission test scores of students and faculty-student ratio. For the first time, the graduate program at the Whiting School of Engineering broke into the top 25 schools ranked by U.S. News in this area. Whiting placed 23rd among graduate engineering schools, up from 27th place last year. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology placed first. U.S. News rated Hopkins' biomedical engineering graduate program as the nation's best. Biomedical engineering at Hopkins involves both the Whiting School and the School of Medicine. The magazine said its rankings were based on a review of faculty resources, research activity, student selectivity and two measures of institutional reputation. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- WJHU reports most successful fund drive WJHU-FM heard from nearly 2,500 listeners during its eight-day on-air fund drive. The law firm of Gordon Feinblatt and First National Bank matched a percentage of each pledge with a donation in each caller's name to Action for the Homeless. This was WJHU's most successful fund drive, said director of community affairs Nan Rosenthal. Compared to the fall drive, it was two days shorter, raised $10,000 more and attracted more members making higher pledges. Members provide the single largest source of income for WJHU. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Family of Poeliu Dai donates book collection Students and faculty doing research in international relations, particularly on the Far East, will soon have complete access to books and documents donated by the family of Poeliu Dai. Dai, who graduated in 1934 with a doctorate in international law and relations, had an extensive collection of books relating to his wide range of interests in international affairs. His family recently donated to the Milton S. Eisenhower Library a major portion of Dai's library, numbering more than 3,585 volumes, in subjects focusing on Canadian and Japanese studies, Chinese literature and histories of Vietnam and Cambodia. Among the most useful editions in the Dai collection, according to collection development coordinator Tom Izdicki, are the books on Southeast Asian politics and history. "I was particularly anxious to have this part of the Dai library to support the [Krieger School of Arts and Sciences] developing program in Asian studies," he said. The collection also includes United Nations documents, which will be shelved in the library's government publications section. The rest of the collection will be shelved according to subject. -----------------------------------------------------------------