Food allergy-related emergency every three minutes in US

Tuesday, 04 January 2011 09:48

Results of an investigation into the frequency of food-related acute allergic reactions among children and adults treated in Emergency Departments throughout the United States have recently been published, and show frequencies are greater than previous estimates.

During the period 2001-2005, the researchers found a total of 7,075, 000 Emergency Department visits with possible food allergy, with approximately 14 per cent of these likely to be true food-related acute allergic reactions. By extrapolating these data, the authors estimated that an adult or child with a food-related allergic reaction visits an Emergency Department somewhere in the United States every three minutes, with such a visit for food-related anaphylaxis occurring every six minutes.

Further studies are required to identify differences in the frequency of visits between children and adults.

Reference: Clark et al. 2010. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. DOI: DOI: 10.1016/j.jaci.2010.10.040