food allergies reconized by AAAAI, glad to hear it, why did it take so long?

[Guest guest]

HealthDay Reporter SUNDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News) -- Potentially

life-threatening allergic reactions to foods remain a major public

health issue and one that is gaining in prominence.It is enough of a

problem that the White House designated Sunday as National

Anaphylaxis Day. Anaphylaxis is a severe allergic reaction that can

cause death. With this declaration of National Anaphylaxis Day, this

disease will be elevated to the prominence it deserves, said Dr. F.

Estelle Simons, president of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma

and Immunology (AAAAI), at a news conference in Miami Beach Sunday.

With that, more health-care professionals, more doctors and members

of the general public will become aware of it and will be able to

recognize the signs and symptoms.Simon spoke at the annual meeting of

the AAAAI.Some 11 million Americans suffer from food allergies and

150 to 200 people die each year from unknowingly ingesting the wrong

food. Food allergies account for at least 30,000 emergency room

visits each year. Allergy to peanuts is one of the most dramatic,

and deadly, examples of food allergy. The prevalence of the allergy

has doubled in children in a five-year period.There is no cure for

food allergy, said Anne Munoz-Furlong, founder and CEO of the Food

Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN).Strict avoidance of the food

is the only way to avoid a reaction. Once a reaction begins, there is

no way to predict how severe the symptoms will become.The emotional

toll of food allergies is fierce, Munoz-Furlong added. Marriages can

break up, and parents leave full-time jobs to take care of allergic

children, who may develop eating disorders and compulsive behavior.

The AAAAI meeting featured a number of reports that helped to shed

light on the different nuances of this problem. One study found that

the number of visits to U.S. emergency rooms as a result of

anaphylaxis may be grossly underestimated, with the real number

closer to 1.04 million visits each year. This represents about 1

percent of all visits to emergency departments, said Dr.

Carmago, senior author of the study and associate professor of

medicine and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. The

study also found that epinephrine, which is the standard antidote for

such allergic reactions, was under-utilized in emergency rooms. If

you don't use epinephrine earlier, the disease progresses and it

might be too late for the medicine to work, Camargo said. Under-

treatment may extend to other contexts as well. A survey of families

attending FAAN conferences found that 34 percent of the most severely

food-allergic individuals were not receiving adequate medical

care.Physicians and families must be educated to ensure that all food-

allergic individuals have epinephrine available to them at all times

and are trained to use it, said Dr. Elinor Simons, lead author of the

study, which was done while she was a fellow at Mount Sinai School of

Medicine in New York City. It's important that anyone with symptoms

seen by a health-care provider be instructed to avoid the food,

instructed to carry epinephrine, given a prescription if they don't

already have it and get adequate follow-up.Although epinephrine is

not entirely without risks, a health-care professional can make the

judgment as to whether a reaction is progressing. We're of the mind

that it's better to be safe than sorry, said Simons, the AAAAI

president.Finally, researchers in the United Kingdom found that

levels of carboxypeptidase, an enzyme associated with mast cells,

were higher in people who had an anaphylactic reaction, compared to

those without a reaction. The prevalence of severe allergic reactions

seems to be increasing throughout the world, but there is uncertainty

about the prevalence because of the lack of good, effective means of

diagnosis, said senior author Walls, of the University of

Southampton. We have developed an assay for this mast cell enzyme and

looked at some 200 cases of anaphylaxis and found an increased

concentration of carboxypeptidase in the blood, Walls said. Our

feeling is that this is going to be a useful new laboratory test for

establishing a diagnosis of anaphylaxis.More

information " http://www.foodallergy.org/ FAAN has more on food

allergies.