Date: 3/18/2009
By HOLLY RAMER
Associated Press Writer
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — One mom says she’d be first in line for a promising treatment that exposes children with peanut allergies to tiny amounts of peanut flour. Another remains fearful, with the painful image of her son’s face blown up beyond recognition still fresh in her mind.
While some parents of children with life-threatening peanut allergies see a glimmer of hope in a recent study suggesting a possible cure, others remain dubious that it will ever change their children’s lives.
“It’s like when we were growing up 20 years ago and we saw the flip phones on Star Trek — that was going to be the wave of the future, but we thought that would never happen,” said Eva Stilkey of Raymond, N.H. “It’s great, but those of us who live with the disappointment and the reality of it, you kind of protect yourself. We really do hope it happens someday, but we don’t want to have false hope.”
Earlier this week, scientists announced the findings of a small study that involved giving a handful of highly allergic children tiny amounts of peanut flour daily for more than two years. Gradually, the children became less sensitive, and so far, five show no remaining sign of the allergy.
Larger studies are beginning to see if the treatment works for more people and how long it lasts. But it was big news for the nearly 2 million Americans who are allergic to peanuts.
Stilkey’s son, Nicholas, who turns 5 on Friday, was 2½ when a single bite of peanut butter pie sparked a severe reaction.
“We had him spit it out, and when he did, when he lifted his head back up. I couldn’t even recognize him. His face was blown up to a point where there was no separation between his nose or his lips. He was stuffing his hands frantically down his throat trying to breathe,” she said.
Stilkey considers the study participants heroes, but she’s in no hurry to follow in their footsteps.
“I am full of complete admiration for the parents and those children who put themselves through that because I know as a mother, I would be absolutely fearful to try to put Nick through that, just because I’ve seen what happened to him,” she said.
Tamara Leibowitz, who runs a support group for parents of children with food allergies in Portsmouth, N.H., said it would be a leap of faith to subject her son to small doses of what essentially has been considered poison, but “I think we’d jump at the chance.”
“My son would be terrified at the beginning, but he’s been paying attention, too, even at 9 years old, and he’s really encouraged by what he sees,” she said, describing her own reaction as “cautiously optimistic.”
In Orange County, Calif., Louise Larsen said she, too, would seek out the treatment if it becomes available.
“Would I put my child through that? Sure, if I sat right next to her, and we went very slowly and it was in a very controlled setting,” said Larsen, whose 12-year-old daughter is allergic to peanuts. But she said she would never be completely convinced that the allergy was gone.
“Even if they did conclude she no longer had any allergy, as her mom, I’m going to send an EpiPen with her until she goes to college,” she said, describing the portable injections used to treat anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction marked by swelling of the throat or tongue, hives, and breathing trouble.
Another California mom, Lori Fletcher, would be just as eager to try the treatment on her 6-year-old son, though she and other parents worry that publicity over the breakthrough would create more misconceptions about food allergies. She doesn’t want people who have heard the news to assume that it means her son now can have “just a little bit” of food containing peanuts. “We still need to be avoiding it,” she said.
But she also found the news inspiring, and plans to use it to promote an upcoming fundraising walk.
“I hope people take from it that if we do raise money, we can get a treatment fairly soon,” said Fletcher, of Danville, Calif.
In the meantime, parents said they will remain vigilant, obsessively checking each food label and ensuring their children’s safety at home and school.
“Every time you think you finally have come to a point where you can sit back a little and trust the school has everything in place, you get the phone call that someone has brought this in by mistake,” said Stilkey.
Lori Pelletier-Baker, of Concord, N.H., hasn’t faced that situation yet because her 4-year-old daughter isn’t in school, but kindergarten is just around the corner.
“It is a constant weight that I think everybody, including Kaleigh, carries on their shoulders,” she said. This week’s breakthrough doesn’t lessen that weight, she said.
“There’s that piece of me that thinks, ‘Wow, that’s so amazing!’ But the reality is that it may take a long time to reach us,” she said. “I’m not going to give up hope, but I know that things aren’t going to change any time soon.”
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Food allergies increasing in US kids, study says
Date: 10/22/2008 8:04 AM
By MIKE STOBBE
AP Medical Writer
ATLANTA (AP) _ Food allergies in American children seem to be on the rise, now affecting about 3 million kids, according to the first federal study of the problem.
But experts said that might be because parents are more aware and quicker to have their kids checked out by a doctor.
About 1 in 26 children had food allergies last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. That’s up from 1 in 29 kids in 1997.
The 18 percent increase is significant enough to be considered more than a statistical blip, said Amy Branum of the CDC, the study’s lead author.
Nobody knows for sure what’s driving the increase. A doubling in peanut allergies — noted in earlier studies — is one factor, some experts said. Also, children seems to be taking longer to outgrow milk and egg allergies than they did in decades past.
But also figuring into the equation are parents and doctors who are more likely to consider food as the trigger for symptoms like vomiting, skin rashes and breathing problems.
“A couple of decades ago, it was not uncommon to have kids sick all the time and we just said ‘They have a weak stomach’ or ‘They’re sickly,'” said Anne Munoz-Furlong, chief executive of the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, a Virginia-based advocacy organization.
Parents today are quicker to take their kids to specialists to check out the possibility of food allergies, said Munoz-Furlong, who founded the nonprofit in 1991.
The CDC results came from an in-person, door-to-door survey in 2007 of the households of 9,500 U.S. children under age 18.
When asked if a child in the house had any kind of food allergy in the previous 12 months, about 4 percent said yes. The parents were not asked if a doctor had made the diagnosis, and no medical records were checked. Some parents may not know the difference between immune system-based food allergies and digestive disorders like lactose intolerance, so it’s possible the study’s findings are a bit off, Branum said.
However, the study’s results mirror older national estimates that were extrapolated from smaller, more intensive studies, said Dr. Hugh Sampson, a food allergy researcher at the Mount Sinai School of medicine.
“This tells us those earlier extrapolations were fairly close,” Sampson said.
The CDC study did not give a breakdown of which foods were to blame for the allergies. Other research suggests that about 1 in 40 Americans will have a milk allergy at some point in their lives, and 1 in 50 percent will be allergic to eggs. Most people outgrow these allergies in childhood.
About 1 in 50 are allergic to shellfish and nearly 1 in 100 react to peanuts, allergies that generally persist for a lifetime, according to Sampson.
Some people have more than one food allergy, he said, explaining why the overall food allergy prevalence is about 4 percent.
Children with food allergies also were more likely to have asthma, eczema and respiratory problems than kids without food allergies, the CDC study found, confirming previous research.
The study also found that the number of children hospitalized for food allergies was up. The number of hospital discharges jumped from about 2,600 a year in the late 1990s to more than 9,500 annually in recent years, the CDC results showed.
Also, Hispanic children had lower rates of food allergies than white or black children — the first such racial/ethnic breakdown in a national study.
The reason for that last finding may not be genetics, said Munoz-Furlong. She is Hispanic and said people in her own family have been unwilling to consider food allergies as the reason for children’s illnesses. “It’s a question of awareness,” she said.
___
On the Net:
The CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
By MIKE STOBBE
AP Medical Writer
ATLANTA (AP) _ Food allergies in American children seem to be on the rise, now affecting about 3 million kids, according to the first federal study of the problem.
But experts said that might be because parents are more aware and quicker to have their kids checked out by a doctor.
About 1 in 26 children had food allergies last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. That’s up from 1 in 29 kids in 1997.
The 18 percent increase is significant enough to be considered more than a statistical blip, said Amy Branum of the CDC, the study’s lead author.
Nobody knows for sure what’s driving the increase. A doubling in peanut allergies — noted in earlier studies — is one factor, some experts said. Also, children seems to be taking longer to outgrow milk and egg allergies than they did in decades past.
But also figuring into the equation are parents and doctors who are more likely to consider food as the trigger for symptoms like vomiting, skin rashes and breathing problems.
“A couple of decades ago, it was not uncommon to have kids sick all the time and we just said ‘They have a weak stomach’ or ‘They’re sickly,'” said Anne Munoz-Furlong, chief executive of the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, a Virginia-based advocacy organization.
Parents today are quicker to take their kids to specialists to check out the possibility of food allergies, said Munoz-Furlong, who founded the nonprofit in 1991.
The CDC results came from an in-person, door-to-door survey in 2007 of the households of 9,500 U.S. children under age 18.
When asked if a child in the house had any kind of food allergy in the previous 12 months, about 4 percent said yes. The parents were not asked if a doctor had made the diagnosis, and no medical records were checked. Some parents may not know the difference between immune system-based food allergies and digestive disorders like lactose intolerance, so it’s possible the study’s findings are a bit off, Branum said.
However, the study’s results mirror older national estimates that were extrapolated from smaller, more intensive studies, said Dr. Hugh Sampson, a food allergy researcher at the Mount Sinai School of medicine.
“This tells us those earlier extrapolations were fairly close,” Sampson said.
The CDC study did not give a breakdown of which foods were to blame for the allergies. Other research suggests that about 1 in 40 Americans will have a milk allergy at some point in their lives, and 1 in 50 percent will be allergic to eggs. Most people outgrow these allergies in childhood.
About 1 in 50 are allergic to shellfish and nearly 1 in 100 react to peanuts, allergies that generally persist for a lifetime, according to Sampson.
Some people have more than one food allergy, he said, explaining why the overall food allergy prevalence is about 4 percent.
Children with food allergies also were more likely to have asthma, eczema and respiratory problems than kids without food allergies, the CDC study found, confirming previous research.
The study also found that the number of children hospitalized for food allergies was up. The number of hospital discharges jumped from about 2,600 a year in the late 1990s to more than 9,500 annually in recent years, the CDC results showed.
Also, Hispanic children had lower rates of food allergies than white or black children — the first such racial/ethnic breakdown in a national study.
The reason for that last finding may not be genetics, said Munoz-Furlong. She is Hispanic and said people in her own family have been unwilling to consider food allergies as the reason for children’s illnesses. “It’s a question of awareness,” she said.
___
On the Net:
The CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
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