Why are food allergies in children on the rise – and is there anything parents can do to protect them? | Society

In July 2016, Natasha Ednan-Laperouse collapsed on a London-Nice flight, victim of a fatal allergic reaction to a baguette bought at Pret a Eanger. During an investigation, the court learned that Natasha, aged 15 and suffering from multiple severe food allergies, had carefully checked the ingredients on the package. The sesame seeds – which were in the bread dough, the family discovered later – are not listed. "It was their fault," said his father Nadim in a statement. "I've been stunned that a big food company like Pret can fool a sandwich and it can kill my daughter."

This horrible case shows how sensitive allergy sufferers are, as well as food businesses, especially because the prevalence of allergies has increased in recent decades.

"Food allergy has been on the rise for some time," says Holly Shaw, nurse advisor at Allergy UK, a charity that helps people with allergies. Children are more likely to be affected – an estimated 6 to 8% of children have food allergies, compared to less than 3% of adults – but their numbers are increasing in Westernized countries and in China.

"As a charity, we have seen an increase in the number of calls we receive from adults and parents of suspected or confirmed allergic children," Shaw says. Some types of allergies are more common in childhood, such as allergy to cow's milk or eggs, but she says, "It's possible at any time of life to develop an allergy to something that has already been tolerated. "

Stephen Till, allergy professor at King's College London and an allergist consultant at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, says an allergic reaction occurs when your immune system inappropriately recognizes something foreign as an insect, and the attack. "You make antibodies that stick to your immune cells," he explains, "and when you are exposed to the allergen again, these antibodies are already present and trigger the reaction of the immune cells."

Allergies can have a huge impact on quality of life and, in rare cases, like Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, they can be fatal. There is no cure for a food allergy, although promising work has recently been done on the use of probiotics and drug treatments. The first test of peanut allergic adults is just starting at Guy's Hospital.

"There is a lot of work on prevention to better understand the withdrawal process, and there is a lot of interest in desensitization," says Adam Fox, pediatric allergology consultant at Guy's and St Thomas Hospitals. Desensitization is accomplished by exposing the patient to tiny, controlled amounts of the allergen. It is a continuous treatment rather than a cure. "When they stop having it regularly, they are allergic again, it does not change the underlying process."

What we do know is that we are more allergic than ever. "In terms of decades, do we see more food allergies than 20 or 30 years ago? I think we can confidently say yes, "says Fox. "If you look at research from the 1990s and early 2000s, there is very good evidence that the amount of peanut allergy has tripled in a very short time."

There has also been an increase in the number of people with serious reactions appearing in hospital emergency departments. In 2015-2016, 4,482 people in England were admitted to AE for anaphylactic shock (although not all were caused by food allergy). That's increasing every year and it's the same in Europe, the United States, and Australia, says Fox.

Why this increase in allergies? The truth is that nobody knows it. Fox does not believe that a better diagnosis is needed. And it will not be a thing. It has been suggested that this may be due to factors ranging from lack of vitamin D to intestinal health and pollution. Withdrawal practices may also influence food allergies. "If you introduce something much earlier in the diet, you may be less likely to be allergic to it," he says. A 2008 study found that the prevalence of peanut allergy among Jewish children in the United Kingdom, who had advised to avoid peanuts, was 10 times higher than among children in Israel, where rates are low. .

Should parents wean their babies earlier and introduce foods such as peanuts? Fox says that it is a "minefield", but he advises to stick to the line of the Department of Health and the World Health Organization which encourages the "minefield", but he advises to stick to the line of the Department of Health and the World Health Organization that encourages the exclusive breastfeeding for six months before introducing other foods, and not to delay the introduction of allergenic foods such as this, as this may increase the risk of allergy, especially in children with eczema ". (Fox says there is a direct relationship between a baby with eczema and the risks of developing a food allergy.)

Adults that Till sees are those whose allergies began in their childhood (people are more likely to suffer from allergies to milk or eggs, for example, than peanut allergies) or allergic to it. adolescence or in adulthood. Again, it's not clear why you can tolerate something all your life and develop an allergy. This could be related to the evolution of our diet in recent decades.

"The most common new severe food allergies I see are molluscs and shrimp in particular," Till says. "I find that the types of food we eat have changed a lot in recent decades because of changes in the food industry and the supply chain." We say we eat now foods like tiger prawns. t eat so often in the past.

He began to see people allergic to lupine meal, which comes from a legume of the same family as peanut, which is more commonly used in continental Europe but increasingly in the United Kingdom. United. Sesame – which would have been the cause of the reaction of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse – is another growing allergen, thanks to its inclusion in products now common, such as hummus. According to Mr. Till, one of the problems with sesame is that it is often not very effective in our tests; it is therefore difficult to measure how much an individual is allergic to this product.

Fox points out that it is important to emphasize that deaths due to food allergy are still rare. "Food allergy is not the leading cause of death for people with food allergies – it's still a very low risk," says Fox. "But of course, you do not want to be the one who is incredibly unlucky, so it creates a lot of anxiety.The real challenge in managing children with food allergy is that it is very difficult to predict which children are going to have. bad reactions, so everyone should behave as if it could be that way. "