Emerging Epidemic: Latest Research on Childhood Food Allergies Shows Troubling Trend
We like to follow research in the food allergy world closely—after all, many of our team members are as personally vested as we are professionally in the advancement of food allergy research! Several of our senior team members either have food allergies or have children with food allergies.
Last month at FABlogCon, we learned that Dr. Ruchi Gupta and her team at Northwestern University were soon releasing a new study in Pediatrics: The Public Health Impact of Parent-Reported Childhood Food Allergies in the United States.
The study was published this month, and we wanted to share some key findings with you:
Food allergies continue to affect a significant number of children in the United States—7.6 percent, or nearly 6 million kids, have a food allergy. Of those, 40 percent report having multiple food allergies.
Food allergies have a meaningful impact on families—42 percent reported a severe allergic reaction to their food allergen, and nearly 1 in 5 reported that their child had visited the emergency department for a food-allergic reaction in the past year!
Not everyone has emergency medicines at the ready—less than half of parents reported that their child has a current prescription for an epinephrine auto-injector, the only treatment for anaphylaxis.
This study is a continuation of the work carried out by Dr. Gupta and her team in 2011. Their objective was to better assess the public health impact on childhood food allergies. They surveyed over 40,000 households using advanced statistical modeling to ensure they captured a representative sample of children in the United States.
One noteworthy feature of this study was a “stringent symptom” methodology, which looked at the frequency, type, and severity of allergy symptoms as part of a diagnosis. This approach helped filter out those who did not likely have a food allergy, as several parents reported a food allergy when the symptoms were more characteristic of a food intolerance or oral allergy syndrome (OAS).
Even after applying the stricter criteria, food allergies are still a significant problem for American children. Today, 1 in 13 kids has a food allergy, which translates to 2 in every classroom. Peanut (2.2%) and milk (1.9%) are the most commonly reported food allergies, affecting 1.6 million and 1.4 million children, respectively. African American children are also more likely to have a food allergy than non-Hispanic white children and are more likely than other children to have multiple food allergies.
Dr. Gupta (second from the left on the bottom row) and her SOAAR research team (Science and Outcomes of Allergy and Asthma Research) at Northwestern University.
We appreciate the work of Dr. Gupta and her team to increase awareness of the public health implications of food allergies. To quote from the study: “With the growing epidemic and life-threatening nature of food allergies, developing treatments and prevention strategies are critical.”
We couldn’t agree more!
- Susannah & the Allergy Amulet Team