Parents overreact on peanut allergies

Monday, 05 October 2009 10:08

The 20th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA) was held in Adelaide in September 2009. Abstracts from the meeting have recently been published in the Internal Medicine Journal [Vol 39(5) pp A139 - A161]. 

Among the research presented at the meeting was an Australian study of 17 pre-school children identified as peanut sensitised. Of this group, the study found only five children showed any clinical reaction to peanut on re-challenge. Of the five children who did react, most showed skin reactions, with only one child showing any airway involvement. The authors concluded that fear of allergy is causing parents to impose strict but unnecessary nut-avoidance regimes on children who are sensitive but not allergic to peanuts. Instead, skin prick tests should be used more frequently as they are a better guide to likely reactivity than serum peanut-specific IgE levels.

Another study presented at the conference shows that nut-allergies are not a ‘class effect’ and that children showing reactivity to one kind of nut could safely tolerate many other kinds after a supervised re-challenge.

The 21st Annual Scientific Meeting of ASCIA will be held in Broadbeach, Queensland on 1-3 September 2010.