This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.Ĭopyright © 2005 NPR. INSKEEP: And that's our personal health news for this morning. ELIZABETH MATSUI (Johns Hopkins University): We still need to be very vigilant about protecting the children who are still peanut and tree nut allergic.ĪUBREY: Given the high number of parents who report to school nurses that their kids are allergic to peanuts, it's clear that some are basing their assessment on old assumptions, instead of up-to-date test results. FITZHUGH: And that's why staying with the doctor, testing, getting the correct information and staying consistent is absolutely the key.ĪUBREY: Hopkins physician Elizabeth Matsui says the latest research does not suggest that schools should give up on peanut-free tables.ĭr. So on the initial reaction, whether you've had a mild, moderate or severe reaction actually does not have any bearing on your chance of outgrowing the allergy.ĪUBREY: So it's clear that parents can't make any assumptions about the progression of their kids' food allergies. ROBERT WOOD (Johns Hopkins University): We thought that those that had had a severe anaphylactic reaction would automatically be less likely to outgrow their allergy, and that's turned out to not be the case. Robert Wood of Hopkins says what's surprising in the research is that this seems to hold up even in children who have had severe allergic reactions early in life.ĭr. Children who start out with a score of five or below on the IgE blood tests have more than a 50 percent chance of tolerating nuts later in life. It's hard for a parent.ĪUBREY: Outgrowing peanut and tree nut allergies is turning out to be fairly common. FITZHUGH: You want to protect your child, and you can't believe that there's-to protect your child, now the doctor has said she can have it and you are supposed to give her peanuts, what could have killed her before. It was advice that made her mother very nervous. When it was clear that she was fine, Erin was sent home and told to start eating as many peanuts as she liked. For several hours, they gave her bits of peanut-laden foods and watched for a reaction. This is the antibody the body produces when it's exposed to an allergen.ĪUBREY: The tests indicated she'd outgrown the peanut allergy entirely, and to be certain, doctors brought Erin in for a day of controlled snacking. So just before Erin entered kindergarten, her mother brought her in for another set of blood tests, which are designed to measure something called IgE. That's because childhood allergies tend to peak between ages three and four and can then begin to wane at five. David Fleisher advised avoiding nuts for a few years and then retesting. And you can see if that number's going up or it's going down, and based on when it's going up or how far it's going up and how quickly it's going down, you can predict when they may outgrow it or whether they will outgrow it at all.ĪUBREY: In Erin's case, Dr. FLEISHER: You can actually follow that level. Erin's results came back surprisingly low, under five for peanuts, walnuts and pecans.ĭr. DAVID FLEISHER(ph): When you do the blood tests, you actually get a number on a scale from negative to greater than a hundred.ĪUBREY: The higher the number, the more intense the allergy. They're more comprehensive than simple skin prick tests.ĭr. But then she took her daughter to see an allergist at Johns Hopkins University, who administered a series of blood tests. LISA FITZHUGH (Parent): And in about three minutes of eating it, her face completely puffed out, and her eyes were shut, and I knew something was really wrong.ĪUBREY: Spoonfuls of Benadryl halted the reaction and to make sure it didn't happen again, Fitzhugh assumed she'd never be able to serve nuts again. Mother Lisa Fitzhugh didn't think much of the fuss until one day in the spring of 1994, when she gave her 18-month-old daughter, Erin, a bite of walnut. Airlines were sued over serving peanuts, and schools declared nut-free lunch tables. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.īack in the mid-1990s, concern over nut allergies spiked. Results from the most recent nut allergy studies are helping doctors predict which kids have the best odds of beating common food allergies. You know, a lot of kids who grew up with allergies to peanuts, walnuts and pecans are learning they can now eat those foods.
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