Allergies

[Anonymous]

The pediatrician suspects my daughter may have a food allergy and wants to refer us to an allergist for testing. My daughter has broken out in hives several times over the last few months as she eats solids. Does anyone know what is involved in “testing” for allergies, ie, how is it done, is it painful, how long does it take to get results, etc.?

Also, I question whether this is truly a food allergy because on each occasion, she rubbed the food all over her face and the hives only appeared where the food touched her face and hands, not on the rest of her body. She has sensitive skin and I wonder if that caused the breakout? Has anyone else experienced this? Other than the hives, she had no symptoms of allergy.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

that sounds like an allergy to me. my niece is allergic to eggs and breaks out in hives if she touches them.

[Anonymous]

What they did for Matthew when he was younger – biopsies of esophagus, to determine whether there are EOS (white blood cells). If there are, then i believe they will try to do some RAST or skin testing (ie some blood tests and skin tests to try and determine what is causing the reaction).

They may also just do RAST test without biopsies though, although testing for allergies is not reliable at this age…. so the best way may be through biopsies

[Anonymous]

It sounds like an allergy to me also. When they do skin testing for allergies they are putting the allergen on your body to see if you swell up from it. They also do blood test for allergies. Both of these test might not be accurate because of the age of the child. We have been told to wait until our son turns two before we test him.

[Anonymous]

We’re in the allergy testing process with Henry. Blood work at her age would be the most reliable. I’m thinking they don’t rule it out if the blood tests come back negative though. Also, they can do skin testing. Some kids do great with this and some don’t. It’s like little pricks or scratches on the skin to see which ones react.

I’ll try to post next week and let you know how ours went.

As far as the breakout/food rubbing thing, here’s a story for you… my nephew has been deathly allergic to dairy his whole life. I mean throat swelling shut if there’s even a trace of dairy on his food! Now that he”s older he was retested and the allergy is less severe. He thought it would be safe to take a job in an icecream shop. The owner loved it cuz he wouldn’t be eating any. Well, the job only lasted a day. His arms broke out just from being near the stuff!! How about that?? So, it is a definite yes for the food rubbing causing a reaction.

[Anonymous]

They did blood work with Kaelyn first. It showed the allergies to wheat and milk. When she was still having issues after we removed wheat and milk from her diet, we did skin testing and discovered the apple and peach allergies.

[Anonymous]

pkkb wrote: They did blood work with Kaelyn first. It showed the allergies to wheat and milk. When she was still having issues after we removed wheat and milk from her diet, we did skin testing and discovered the apple and peach allergies.

Kim, what were her symptoms, just out of curiosity? And did she mind the skin testing?

[Anonymous]

For Taylor she had a lot of GI problems that occur due to her allergies. She would get very gassy, bloated, and had a lot of problems pass stools even when they were soft. We tried so many formulas even neocate but she had such problems on all of them. We kept on trying to switch formulas we are currently on formula #10 for her so the MD said enough was enough and spoke to the head of the allergy department. He said she was a little too young but given the situation he will do testing on her. He said he will not do bloodwork since she is too young and they would need too much for all the testing so he did the skin test. They did food and environmental all the pricks were on her back. She cried a little but that was it. We waited around for 20 mins to see if there was any reactions and sure enough she is allergic to milk, corn, and corn syrup which is in all formulas. We are going to continue to follow up with him and as she gets older he is going to do a sensitivity test.

[Anonymous]

For months Kaelyn’s only symptoms were constipation and mild eczema (and a lot of her fussiness was probably due to her allergies). Once we started introducing whole milk and wheat into her diet, the eczema started spreading. Right before we got the results of her blood tests the eczema developed into full blown hives that looked almost like boils. It was really disturbing.

She’s had the skin testing done twice. The first time was a little rough, but she was in the beginning stages of a cold, so she was already pretty cranky. The second time wasn’t bad at all. Dh and I both went. She lay face down on my lap and the nurse did the skin test on her back while dh held her hands and talked to her. We worked with a pediatric allergist, so the nurse was really good at doing the test as quickly as possible.

The first time they only tested for foods that she ate regularly. She was still reacting, so the second time they tested for anything that she’d ever had. They didn’t test for wheat and milk since they came up in the blood test.

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