Until last month, treatment of food allergy outside of academic medical centers was either avoidance or an attempt to desensitize by oral immunotherapy--known by the shorter acronym OIT. Research and increasing use of sublingual (i.e. under the tongue) desensitization--known as SLIT--by some community-based allergists has...
While our focus since mid-March has been on COVID-19, a new FDA-approved treatment for peanut allergy has been available. On January 31st, the product Palforzia (the generic name being ‘Peanut [Arachis hypogaea] Allergen Powder—dnfp’) was approved to use if one is between the ages 4 through 17 for the first dose with a confirmed...
Tests that are considered proven for diagnosing food allergy have been skin tests, blood tests that look for IgE (the class of antibody associated with allergic diseases) and, if necessary, an office ingestion challenge. When the skin tests and blood tests are normal, the scientific conventional approach is to call a recurrent specific...
We all have become better-educated by the media and the government about immunology over the past two months. But, I think we are all also tired of hearing about and living with COVID-19 day in and day out. I’ve been wanting to write about gluten sensitivity for a while since I heard a 2018 medical study on the topic that was...
In the past two years, I have written about peanut oral desensitization (i.e. OIT) during the month of July because of an annual meeting that takes in the early summer among those allergists who offer the treatment. I have attended all three such meetings, the most recent one occurring late last month. As we approach the FDA decisions...
Among the restaurant choices in Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, the restaurant chain Pret A Manger (French for ‘ready to eat’) seems to offer upscale fresh fast food to eat while waiting for one’s connecting flight. Being a corporation based in the United Kingdom with most of its ~530 stores located there, some of us would have the...