Allergy Update

Henry went to the allergist this afternoon and he is doing great! She said we are doing an excellent job managing his allergies. She decided we can do a food challenge! Here is a link to an article that explains the testing that is done for food allergies: http://community.kidswithfoodallergies.org/displaycontent/content/food-allergy-test-diagnosis-skin-prick-blood

To summarize the article, there are three types of testing: blood tests, skin prick tests, and food challenges. Blood tests and skin prick tests can give a general idea of what is going on but they have a high false positive rate, which means a person is not really allergic to a food even though these tests show a reaction. The only way to truly know if a person has a food allergy is for the person to eat said food and see if there is a reaction. If you know what can happen (anaphylaxis), the idea of doing a food challenge can be pretty scary, but it is exciting too. What will happen for Henry's challenge is that I will bake muffins with a ratio of 1/3 of an egg per muffin and we will take them into the office. They will cut it up and he will eat a piece at a time over a couple of hours while the watch him for a reaction. Baking the egg at high eat will, hopefully, change the egg enough that he won't react to it. If he passes the challenge eating baked eggs regularly may help him outgrow his egg allergy altogether.

If you are interested in learning more about food allergies two trusted sites with lots of information are:
Kids with Food Allergies    and
FAAN