Cluj Centre

Personnel

• Dr Paraschiva Chereches Panta
• Diana Church
• Professor Diana Deleanu
• Professor Mircea Nanulescu

The story of ISAAC in Cluj

In a hot summer day in Transylvania, an ordinary mail send to Professor Bengt Björkstén was the certificate of birth for ISAAC Cluj centre.

I was a young researcher in the field of medicine with a dream for allergy diseases. So I was looking for foreign collaboration (after many years of “iron curtain”). Professor Bengt Björkstén was very pleased with my “desire” for an epidemiological study in the field of allergic diseases (Romania was a white spot on Europe for allergy) – I was a resident in the allergy specialty at that time.

We did our collaboration during those years (beginning of 90’s) by mail and after that on e-mail (which helped us a lot!).

It was difficult at the beginning but working on the project, things were moving one with a lot of enthusiasm. I was contacted by Professor Mircea Nanulescu, the chief of Pediatrics in our University, the director of 3rd Pediatric Clinic with a department for asthma, so we started an almost 20 years of collaboration. He also arranged for one of his youngest, optimistic collaborators – Paraschiva Chereches Panta (Pusa for friends) – to work at the study.

One year later I had the opportunity to met professor Bengt Björkstén, one of the most remarkable people I have known during these years. Working with the questionnaires we could see the good changes that were happening in our country: in schools, in hospitals. Pusa and I reached the title of specialty in allergy, and pediatrics respectively.

We organized a summer school in Cluj with EAACI and Ga2len and Tadd Clayton was one of our guests - speakers. He presented the phase three results from ISAAC.

Unhappily, it was difficult for us to organize the study for 6 years old children and video questionnaires. Also the phase two study was performed in only some of our responders.

But with new help we did the ISAAC phase three study: Diana Church joined us. We the ISAAC team “grew” with the study: I organized the study of allergy in our University, and became president of our Allergy Society, Pusa is one of the most famous doctors for asthmatic children, Diana Church is working in Southampton and Berlin in the field of allergy, Professor Mircea Nanulescu organized the Romanian Pediatric Society for Respiratory Diseases.

We are pleased that our work, the only one in our country is recognized by our colleagues as a priority in epidemiology of asthma and allergic diseases in Romania.