Food allergies are one of the biggest challenges for parents today. They’re easily over or miss diagnosed, and they can lead to a childhood full of restrictive diets and expensive and complicated meal planning that may not be necessary. That’s why a new standard for evaluating and treating food allergies is being developed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID).
The 43 recommendations in the new guidelines were developed by NIAID after working jointly with more than 30 professional groups, advocacy organizations and federal agencies. Rand Corp. was also commissioned to perform a review of the medical literature on food allergies. A summary of the guidelines appears in the December issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
One of the things the new guidelines will do is establish which tests need to be done to establish an allergy. Simple skin prick testing, the most common avenue for discovering allergies, will often need to be backed up with complete medical histories and what doctors call “food challenges” to confirm that the patient has a true food allergy, not just a sensitivity that might make them react on a skin test.
“Diagnosing a food allergy is not just doing a skin test, or not just doing a blood test, or not even having a report of a food allergy. It takes a combination of good medical history, as well as laboratory tests and in some cases a food challenge, to make the appropriate diagnosis,” Dr. Hugh A. Sampson, an author of the guidelines, said during a Friday afternoon news conference detailing the guidelines.
Check out the new guidelines here.
