I think Anaphylaxis is the new Asthma
Found this interesting piece on Time (see full story below). I just love knowing about this stuff. Melanie likes it even more since she comes from a scientist and high school science teacher working background.
I’ve said it before but I personally think food allergies is the new asthma. 30 years ago asthma was the new kid on the block, and I know because I suffered badly with it since I was a baby until my middle teens, and in the beginning not much was known about it. Well that’s just like food allergies today. Thankfully things progressed with asthma and I’m sure it will with food allergies as well.
Aaron
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“Over the past 20 years, the number of patients we’ve seen with food allergies has increased tremendously,” says Dale Umetsu, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston. “Many more young children have multiple food allergies and the allergies are more severe.”
And nobody knows why. Popular culprits range from genetically modified foods to vaccines to roasted, rather than boiled, peanuts. The dominant theory, dubbed the hygiene hypothesis holds that as our lives have gotten cleaner-more antibiotics, immunizations, and antibacterial soaps-our immune systems aren’t practicing on the right microbes and attack foods instead.
The second major hypothesis, according to Donald Leung, head of pediatric allergy and immunology at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, is “food-induced tolerance”—early exposure to certain foods (even in utero or through breast milk) triggers allergic reactions.
Contradictory evidence abounds: In a June paper published in Pediatrics, children who ate wheat before six months of age actually had lower allergy rates than those who avoided it. Some studies show C-section delivered babies to be more allergic; others, the opposite. Some evidence suggests homogenized peanut butter is the culprit, other studies point to an increased use of vegetable oils. Dr. Hugh Sampson, professor of pediatrics and immunology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and widely considered the top expert in the field, says: “It’s all still speculative. The answer probably lies in multiple factors-a combination of the hygiene hypothesis and environmental and dietary changes-but my sense is that we still have not gotten to the bottom of why this dramatic increase is happening.”
Interesting prediction. It is very difficult to synthesise a consistent view point or guidance from the various research papers - which makes it fascinating but infuriating.
I liked the Time piece - I thought that it was very readable.
It is unhelpful to say that it seems to be a tandem effect of genetics, life events and exposure but that is probably as close as we are going to get for a while.
Regards - Shinga
You find this of interest: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16675341&query_hl=2&itool=pubmed_docsum
It concludese that “In the first year of life, the rate of parentally perceived food hypersensitivity is considerably higher than objectively assessed food hypersensitivity.”
Thanks for the link Clark. Interesting indeed. I’m going to talk about that in a separate post.
I read the abstract to Melanie (my wife) and she already knew the stats. Typical, just when I thought I could tell her something new about food allergies.
Aaron