According to an article today in the NY Times Health section, there is rampant over-diagnosis of allergies in children due to physicians' regular practice of using faster, cheaper blood tests and not following up with "food challenges" where the child eats the food under doctor supervision and is observed for reaction. Often the food challenges result in the realization that many more foods can be eaten safely than the blood tests would indicate, as the article states:
A 2003 report in Pediatrics said a positive result on a blood allergy test correlated with a real-world food allergy in fewer than half the cases.
Does this partially answer the confusion over why peanut allergy is supposedly so much more prevalent now than in the past, and the question of whether it is due to better diagnostic tools or an actual increase in the number of kids with the allergy? Maybe it's due to diagnostic tools with false positives more than half the time.
If it was established in 2003 that this type of testing is completely inaccurate, why is it still widely used?
My favorite part of the article is towards the end:
A 2008 study of 10,000 British children, reported in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found that early exposure to peanuts lowered allergy risk.
A 2003 report in Pediatrics said a positive result on a blood allergy test correlated with a real-world food allergy in fewer than half the cases.
Does this partially answer the confusion over why peanut allergy is supposedly so much more prevalent now than in the past, and the question of whether it is due to better diagnostic tools or an actual increase in the number of kids with the allergy? Maybe it's due to diagnostic tools with false positives more than half the time.
If it was established in 2003 that this type of testing is completely inaccurate, why is it still widely used?
My favorite part of the article is towards the end:
A 2008 study of 10,000 British children, reported in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found that early exposure to peanuts lowered allergy risk.
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