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Food allergies in children on the rise
Published December 2, 2008
A recorded increase in the frequency of food allergies in children has doctors looking for the reason and researchers working to find a treatment.
The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in October that 1 in 26 children had food allergies last year, up from 1 in 29 children in a 1997 study.
The increase is significant enough to be considered more than a statistical blip, some doctors say.
DIFFERING OPINIONS
“There is data to show that peanut allergy in children is definitely increasing in frequency,” said Dr. Allan Bock, who studies allergies at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Colorado. “I really don’t know why but there are several hypotheses.”
He said those hypotheses aren’t easy to explain.
Dr. David Anmuth of the Pearland-based Allergy and Asthma Associates said he’s not convinced the prevalence of food allergies in children really is on the rise.
“I just think we’re coming more in tune to it and we’re happening to see more of it, I guess,” Anmuth said. “When they actually look at studies, I think the percentages are actually very similar. I think it may be more education, that people understand it more and I think people are more in tune to seeing physicians if they have a reaction.”
He also said the reactions could be because families more often are eating out rather than preparing
their meals at home, exposing them to some ingredients that might not be detailed in the menu explanations.
THE STATS
Anmuth said the most common food allergies in young children are milk and eggs, with soy, wheat and nuts becoming more prevalent as they get older and shellfish and fish becoming more common at a later age.
Children sometimes outgrow allergies to milk, egg or soy but might not outgrow their allergies to peanuts. Adults usually keep their allergies for life.
“You can develop an allergy at any time. For whatever reason, it can happen at any time,” Anmuth said.
Children with food allergies are more likely to have asthma, eczema and respiratory problems than children without food allergies, the CDC study also found.
According to the study, the number of children hospitalized for food allergies is up from about 2,600 a year in the late 1990s to more than 9,500 in recent years.
SUBSTITUTING FOOD
For school districts, food allergies cause a change in the menu, or a different method of preparation, officials said.
“We have only had one child with a true food allergy,” Columbia-Brazoria ISD Child Nutrition Director Jenieffe Heaven said. “What we did is we gave the parents a menu and let them go through it. We have a binder with food labels that tell you what’s in the products we’re using, so if a child has an allergy to something really bad, we pull up that label and make sure it’s not in it.”
In addition to school districts, other public entities are cutting back on foods that could produce allergic reactions.
Some airlines have stopped serving peanuts to customers, and others have started substituting other snacks if someone is known to have an allergy.
One such example is Delta Airlines, which attempts to provide a “buffer zone” of three rows in front of and behind customers with severe peanut allergies, according to the airline’s Web site.
Many airlines recommend that those who require special meals reserve tickets by phone and mention the dietary requirements at that time.
TREATING THE SYMPTOMS
More research is being conducted to decide how best to treat allergies, but the best way is to avoid the food completely, Anmuth said.
“If you have a reaction that’s severe, the main treatment is to completely avoid it in all aspects,” Anmuth said. “So if you’re allergic to peanuts, then you would avoid nuts in every aspect. Whether it’s peanuts, cakes or cookies or types of Chinese foods, you would completely eliminate that from the diet.”
Some people aren’t sure they have a true food allergy, though.
“A true food allergy is something that would cause anaphylaxis, something that would cause hives, difficulty breathing or vomiting, something that would cause multiple systems per se, versus something you eat and you kind of get an upset stomach,” Anmuth said.
There are new treatments being developed and tested, Bock said.
“The ones currently being studied involve the oral administration of the food proteins in small amounts under the tongue,” Bock said. “There are new vaccines being developed that hopefully will be very safe and effective, but this will take some more time.”
Anmuth said the best thing for someone with severe allergies to do is carry around an epinephrine pen, which can be obtained after undergoing allergy testing.
The complete report is available at www.cdc.gov/nchs.
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