Background: Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood. Exposure to allergens plays an important role in asthma. Recently, cockroach has attracted attentions as an important allergen. Objective: To evaluate cockroach allergy in Iranian children with asthma. Methods: 100 children with asthma were studied. After determination of asthma severity, serum total IgE and blood eosinophils w...

J. Econ. Entomol. 81(2): 536-544 (1988) ABSTRACT The efficacy of several insecticides for controlling the German cockroach, Blattella germanica (L.), was compared in field and laboratory tests. Based on trap catch before and after treatment in a multiunit public housing complex, 0.2% cypermethrin was more effective than 0.5% chlorpyrifos or 1.1% propoxur. Up to 3 mo of residual activity was ach...

An allergen cloned from a Blattella germanica (German cockroach) cDNA library, encoded a 182-amino acid protein of 20,904 Da. This protein, designated B. germanica allergen 4 (Bla g 4), was expressed as a glutathione S-transferase fusion protein in Escherichia coli and purified by affinity chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography. The prevalence of serum IgE antibody to recombi...

β-Diguetoxin-Dc1a (Dc1a) is a toxin from the desert bush spider Diguetia canities that incapacitates insects at concentrations that are non-toxic to mammals. Dc1a promotes opening of German cockroach voltage-gated sodium (Nav) channels (BgNav1), whereas human Nav channels are insensitive. Here, by transplanting commonly targeted S3b-S4 paddle motifs within BgNav1 voltage sensors into Kv2.1, we ...

We used RNA interference (RNAi) to silence the expression of a gene encoding Bla g 1, a human allergen produced by the German cockroach, Blattella germanica L., to study its function in cockroach physiology. Females injected with 1 microg of double-stranded RNA contained 64% less Bla g 1 protein and Bla g 1 mRNA abundance was reduced by 91.4% compared to sham-injected females. Bla g 1 knockdown...