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"While we found that one in 10 adults have food allergy, nearly twice as many adults think that they are allergic to foods, while their symptoms may suggest food intolerance or other food related conditions," says lead author Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, from Lurie Children's, who also is a Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "It is important to see a physician for appropriate testing and diagnosis before completely eliminating foods from the diet. If food allergy is confirmed, understanding the management is also critical, including recognizing symptoms of anaphylaxis and how and when to use epinephrine."
[...] "We were surprised to find that adult-onset food allergies were so common," says Dr. Gupta. "More research is needed to understand why this is occurring and how we might prevent it."
The study data indicate that the most prevalent food allergens among U.S. adults are shellfish (affecting 7.2 million adults), milk (4.7 million), peanut (4.5 million), tree nut (3 million), fin fish (2.2 million), egg (2 million), wheat (2 million), soy (1.5 million), and sesame (.5 million).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday January 06 2019, @05:59PM (1 child)
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the hygiene hypothesis [wikipedia.org] so far, since it's commonly implicated as something that may be contributing to increased incidence of allergies.
Our immune systems develop based on exposure to pathogens and various substances. Without such exposure, it's postulated that overreactions from our immune systems may occur and create an allergic reaction. There are potentially a number of contributing factors to this (if the hygiene hypothesis is true) -- from general cleanliness in our modern environment to anti-bacterial agents used frequently around us (and within us) to the lack of diversity in exposure to various agents (which is thought to come from a variety of sources, from a limited Western diet to increased Caesarian sections and decreased breastfeeding).
I don't know about you, but these days I see hand sanitizer everywhere. Could adults who grew up in a culture of anti-bacterial everything continue to accrue new allergies due to a dysfunctional immune system? Anecdote is of course not data, but one of my family members who is meticulous in cleanliness and had been using hand sanitizers, etc. for over a decade before they became common (and anti-bacterial soap much longer) now has been diagnosed with three different severe autoimmune disorders. Also, things like we know overprescription of antibiotics is a huge issue, but a side effect of that may also be decreased diversity in gut flora... and now we have a huge industry in "probiotics" to try to combat this (likely ineffectively in most cases).
As noted in other posts, many supposed "allergies" may just be food intolerance that causes digestive issues, rather than a true allergy. But those food sensitivities and intolerances could also be related to gut flora, so there may be related elements to the hygiene hypothesis, even if they aren't true allergies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @02:20PM
This hypothesis doesn't work in my case, I was a rather 'gross' child (and there's 8mm cine footage of me aged 5 covered in mud to prove it..), spent a lot of time mucking around with errr muck (e.g. Damming streams, digging underground dens etc etc) and was an inveterate forager, in short, for a glorious decade and a bit I was exposed to all sorts of weird and wonderful 'microbial things found lurking' in the hills, woods and waters in a 10-15 mile radius of my home. I still developed allergies later in life.
I know at least one of the minor (non anaphylaxis causing) allergies I suffer is genetic in origin, my father suffered from it, his father suffered from it, my sisters suffer it and it remained dormant in me until I hit my mid 40s, more lately I suspect I'm developing (currently) an intolerance to products of the Solanaceae family which might be genetic and has been passed down on my mother's side of the family. This has developed in the past two years after 50 years of eating produce from this family without issues, so far the worst offenders are potatoes and tomatoes, but worryingly it seems to be expanding to include chillies..
Spuds I can live without, tomatoes ? meh take or leave them...but chillies? fsck no!