Allergies can be pain in the stomach

[Guest guest]

Hi,

This article was passed on to me by a friend and thought some of you might

find it interesting.

Happy, healthy new year to you all!

Billings

>http://www.healthscout.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Af?ap=55 & id=106830

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>Allergies Can Be Pain in the Stomach

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>Gastrointestinal problems in kids could be an allergic reaction

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>By Edelson

>HealthScout Reporter

>

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>

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>

>WEDNESDAY, Dec. 27 (HealthScout) -- That nausea, stomach pain and weight

>loss your child is going through may have more to do with an allergy than

>digestion, say researchers.

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>Parents and pediatricians are being warned about the rapidly increasing

>incidence of a new disease -- an allergic reaction that somehow affects the

>digestive system and also can cause vomiting and painful swallowing.

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>Called eosinophilic esophagitis, the condition is a marked by a buildup of

>eosinophils, blood cells involved in the allergic response, in the

>esophagus, the muscular tube that carries food from the throat to the

>stomach. The buildup is accompanied by the classic symptoms of esophagitis,

>an inflammation of the esophagus, which can make digestion so painful that

>some children refuse to eat.

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> " There has been quite an explosion in the incidence of this problem,

>particularly in children, especially those with allergies, " says Dr. Marc E.

>Rothenberg, director of the allergy and clinical immunology section at the

>Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati.

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>Many children with the condition have hay fever, asthma or another allergic

>condition, he says. They are brought to a doctor's office with symptoms of

>reflux, a gastrointestinal problem, but they do not respond to standard

>treatments. A biopsy finds a large number of eosinophils in the esophagus.

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>In a paper in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Rothenberg and his

>colleagues describe an animal model showing that a specific allergy-causing

>fungus can produce classic symptoms of esophagitis.

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> " This is the first study to show that things you breathe into the nose and

>mouth can affect the gastrointestinal tract, so controlling exposure to

>allergens may help in the treatment of esophagitis. A second message is that

>medications used to treat allergies may be useful for esophagitis, "

>Rothenberg says.

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>No one knows the underlying cause of the condition or why it has become so

>common, Rothenberg says. He says it might be due to " an environmental change

>that has taken place in the last 50 years. There are changes in the normal

>human flora, increased use of vaccination. It could be caused by changes in

>lifestyle. "

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>Whatever the cause, new treatments have emerged in the last few years, says

>Dr. Glenn T. Furata, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Harvard

>Medical School pediatric program of gastroenterology and nutrition.

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> " A treatment first defined in 1995 used an elemental diet, a liquid that has

>proteins broken down so that tissue is not exposed to a lot of intact

>proteins, " he says.

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>Doctors also have successfully used allergy-fighting steroids and other

>drugs, Furata says. One novel treatment has patients swallow a steroid

>usually inhaled for asthma. " You can give a lower steroid dose and reduce

>the side effects of systemic steroids. We are just now completing a trial of

>this medication, " he says.

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>Rothenberg's study is " really the first animal model that identified an

>allergen that may cause this condition. Now we need human studies, " Furata

>says.

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>While the allergen identified by Rothenberg is a fungus, other

>allergy-causing substances almost certainly also are involved, he says.

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>What To Do

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>Parents and pediatricians should be aware that a child with gastrointestinal

>symptoms of reflux disease may be suffering an unusual allergic response.

>Furata says, " What we are saying is that reflux disease is not necessarily

>related to gastric acid or peptic ulcer disease but to something else. "

>

>For more information on the gastrointestinal tract and its diseases, check

>the Mayo Clinic or this bulletin board for parents of children with

>allergies.

>

>HealthScout also has reported on how allergies affect children.