Food Allergy Assistant and Technical Difficulties

The Food Allergy Assistant is caught up in "name servers", "domain registration", "DNS information", "ISP's" and many other confusing technical terms. The website is broken! I can still be found at www.foodallergyassistant.blogspot.com, but the links are not working on the blog page for now.

So, I'm learning how a DNS works and how to point my website to a name server. I should have www.foodallergyassistant.com up and running again in the next few days.

Fingers crossed...

In the meantime, check in this week through the Blogspot address.

Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy

The public is welcome to comment on the “Guidelines of the Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy”, as developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. These guidelines have been established to give information to healthcare providers about diagnosis and treatment of food allergies.

The bad news is that it is a 119 page document. The good news is that you have until May 6, 2010 to comment.

Who better to give that input than us?

Honestly, it is an interesting read. In the section "Management of Food-Induced Anaphylaxis", it is clearly stated that an epinephrine auto-injector should be the first-line treatment. The use of antihistamines was often given as a reason for not using epinephrine. All studies indicate that this puts the patient at significant risk of a life-threatening reaction. The guidelines also acknowledge that school aged children who do not have immediate access to epinephrine, are at an increased risk for a life-threatening event.

Take that to your uncooperative school administrator.

So, grab a cup of coffee and a few quiet moments, and take a look at the guidelines. Then, register, and offer your comments. I must admit, it feels good to be asked for an opinion about how healthcare providers handle food allergy.

Allergy Gene Identified

Researchers at CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) have identified the gene that could be responsible for eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE).

This is big news because the gene, TSLP, has already been linked to other allergic diseases, like asthma and eczema. It's just another piece of the puzzle as scientists try to understand the relationships between allergic diseases in an effort to treat and cure these common disorders.

You will need to subscribe to Nature Genetics in order to read the full article, but here is a snapshot, written in the India edition of Zee News.

Food Allergy Research Findings Presented at Conference

The AAAAI (American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology) wrapped up its annual conference last week. Food allergy was the center of several prominent studies. Here is a re-cap of some of the big ones:

Oral Immunotherapy shows Promise for Egg Allergy- Early results from this study show that egg allergic children may be able to tolerate eggs following a course of ingesting increasing amounts of egg protein. Of course this has all been done in a carefully controlled setting and should not be tried at home. More about that in the video link at the end of this post.

Milk Allergic Children Tolerate Milk heated at high temperatures. The study shows that up to 80% of milk allergic children may be able to eat baked products like cookies and cakes containing milk. Something seems to change within the milk protein when it is heated at a high temperature. Research in this area continues.

Anaphylaxis to Meat is more common than originally thought. The message is that clinicians should investigate whether or not there is a meat allergy when there are unexplained allergy symptoms. In meat allergy, the allergic reaction is to the sugar in the meat, not the protein. This is the first food allergy to stem from sugars. The research shows that meat allergies tend to develop in adults who have tolerated meat all their lives, then, possibly due to a bee sting or tick bite, suddenly become meat allergic.

An Oral Immunotherapy for Peanut Allergy study revealed that children receiving increasing amount of peanut powder, could tolerate 20 peanuts after 10 months of treatment. A different three year study showed a significant number of children who were able to stop immunotherapy and can now eat peanuts successfully.

Check out this video from the conference about when oral immunotherapy may be ready to be used as a regular treatment for food allergy.

When you next visit your allergist, ask about these studies and how they may relate to your situation. I am glad to see that research is moving ahead, but I am also reminded that we have a ways to go before we can say food allergies are curable.

Eating Out with Food Allergies

Here is the perfect name for a site dedicated to helping people with food allergies dine away from home:

Lonely Plate

Sharona Schwartz has just launched lonelyplate.org, an interactive database that allows visitors to read and write reviews of restaurants, hotels, airlines and kid-friendly venues. The unique aspect is that the reviews pertain specifically to how food allergy and food sensitivity issues are managed.

So, let's say you're planning a trip and one or more family members has a food allergy. Check out the site to see which airline receives the highest ranking from other food allergy families. Read about restaurants at your your destination to choose the allergy friendly spots. Find out which hotels cater to food allergies. Then, after your trip, go to Lonely Plate and post some reviews yourself. It's a great way for food allergic families to share information.

Sharona has also made a commitment that if certain establishments continually pop up as mis-handling food allergy concerns, they will contact them to bring these reports to their attention and to offer help in amending procedures.

A win-win for all, I say. Check out lonelyplate.org and share some of your experiences.

The History of Peanut Allergies

There has been much speculation about the alarming increase in the number of people with peanut allergy. Over and over I hear people say, "I didn't know anyone with a peanut allergy when I was growing up and now most kids seem to be allergic to peanuts". Many of us have wondered what's happening to cause so many children to become peanut allergic.

Author and historian Heather Fraser, wondered the same thing. After extensive research, Heather has put her findings in a book due out later this month, The History of the Peanut Allergy Epidemic.

I recently had the opportunity to ask Heather some questions about her research and interest in this subject. Read on, it's fascinating...

What compelled you to write a book about the history of peanut allergy?

I am the mother of a peanut/tree nut allergic child and an historian trained in academic research. Over a year ago, I began to read in-depth about the history of food allergy. I learned about Charles Richet, who coined the term "anaphylaxis" (c.1913) and Clemens von Pirquet who in 1906 called these altered reactions "allergy". I combed the literature and discovered that outbreaks of peanut allergy began to occur only after WWII. The medical literature revealed a slow but noticeable growth of the allergy in children through the late 1960s up until the late 1980s. Around 1990, there was a sudden explosion of this allergy just in toddlers. This moment of acceleration is well-documented by ER records, cohort studies of the time and eyewitness accounts. Society finally noticed that something was wrong when these kids showed up for kindergarten. The sudden surge of peanut and food allergic kids took everyone by surprise -- school systems, teachers, parents, communities.

I knew that this story would be important to parents of peanut allergic children. We are living in something of an information vacuum.

Was it difficult to track down research on this topic?

No. It was not difficult at all, but it was time consuming. The events that led up to the epidemic of peanut allergy in children unfolded in plain sight – medical journals, newspapers, magazines, and books all document what took place.

The History of the Peanut Allergy Epidemic pinpoints the precise moment of the allergy’s appearance and describes the perfect storm of social, medical, political and economic factors from which it has grown. My thesis, regarding the precipitating cause of the peanut allergy epidemic will challenge every parent. I hesitate to cut to the chase because a full appreciation of the causes should be revealed gradually within the context of over 100 years of history. Otherwise, the conclusion may come as too big of a shock to the reader – my goal is to get people thinking and talking about the peanut allergy from a new direction -- which is, how we as a society have created this epidemic.

A 2010 statistic from Australia shows that now 3% of school aged children have peanut allergy – this ballooning PA population has developed in just 20 years. All stats show that UK has been the worst hit by PA followed by parts of Australia, Canada, Sweden, the US. I would expect our numbers to be similar to those in Australia (ACT).

What was the most surprising thing you learned about peanut allergy while researching The History of the Peanut Allergy Epidemic?

I discovered that I had defined anaphylaxis too narrowly. After reading Margie Profet’s The Function of Allergy: Immunological Defense Against Toxicity (1991), everything began to make sense.

According to Profet, anaphylaxis is a potentially deadly but evolutionarily programmed response to toxins/proteins that have penetrated first lines of natural defense and managed to enter the blood stream. All mammals exhibit anaphylaxis and have IgE. There is a debate in the medical literature over whether allergy is the outcome of a roulette style genetic predisposition to immune dysfunction OR is allergy an innate, purposeful immune response. It came as a surprise to me that allergy should have a function. The function is to protect the body against acute toxicity – the sneezing, itching, vomiting, diarrhea are attempts to eject a toxin as fast as possible; the drop in blood pressure to prevent the toxin from circulating to vital organs.

And researchers know “how to” create anaphylaxis – they create the condition regularly and easily in mice and other animals in labs. Richet created anaphylaxis time and again in his raw meat experiments with dogs and other animals over 100 years ago. None of the functional mechanisms of sensitizing a mammal are new to medicine. What seems to have happened today is that we have lost the threads and landmarks of the story as a whole. My book attempts to bring back the history and answer the question: how did millions of people, especially children, in the last 20 years become allergic to this one food? Although my conclusions are meticulously if not obsessively documented, they may still be difficult to accept.

What is the take-away you hope people will get after reading the book?

I hope to get parents thinking and talking about peanut allergy in more complete and broader terms than we do now. It is not a coincidence that hundreds of thousands of toddlers became allergic to the same food, at the same time, around 1990, and in just certain countries. Something precipitated and continues to cause this allergy almost exclusively in children – and more in boys than girls in a 2:1 ratio.

Where can people learn more about the book?

Visit http://www.peanutallergyepidemic.com for a time line and a first chapter free download. Next week I will begin selling copies of the book from the site via credit card (Visa®).
There is a contact form at the website and I do have advance copies of the book available. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

We've all been wondering. Heather's research will now give us some of the answers. I couldn't help but shake my head as I read the first downloaded chapter. I had no idea...

Buy a copy for yourself, your allergist, the school nurse and your peanut allergic child. This book will clear up many questions and will, no doubt, have you shaking your head too.

Egg Allergy Study Shows Postitive Results

This is big news!

We really are getting closer to a food allergy cure. AAAAI (American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology) made an exciting announcement at their annual conference which began in New Orleans Feb. 26 and continues through March 2.

The announcement involved a multi-center trial including Duke, Johns Hopkins, Mount Sinai, National Jewish and the University of Arkansas. The trial involved 55 children between the ages of 5-18.

All had egg allergy- notice the word "had".

Some of the participants received a placebo. The other group received egg white solid oral immunotherapy. That means this group was given increasing amounts of egg protein in a controlled setting.

The results? After 44 weeks, both groups were tested and 21 of the 40 receiving the egg protein, are no longer egg allergic. The 15 who were in the placebo group continue to have egg allergy.

Here's the full press release from the conference.

We're making forward movement on this!!!