food challenges

[giantsfan13]

i've been working in a allergy practice for 4 years we recently took on a new dr. and he is starting to do food challenges if anyone knows and has info on it please let me know. thanks

[Thunderwolf, MSN, RN]

Moved post here for better member visibility.

[EmmaG, RN]

My daughter and her youngest went through this; the baby was having a reaction to [something] being passed to her while breastfeeding. Daughter went through allergy testing, then was placed on an elimination diet. As foods were re-introduced, they watched the baby for reactions; turns out there were multiple allergies.

The doc felt that some of these allergies would gradually abate because the levels of antibodies were fairly low, so after a couple of years, the allergist did a controlled challenge in his office. It lasted pretty much the entire day.

He took a blood sample, then administered a minute amount of the food. He continued to watch and test for reaction as more and more of the food was given.

This was a pretty exhaustive process and it was decided that, for at least a few of the foods, the allergies had indeed 'gone away'. However, she was told to feed them in moderation. That's been a few years back, and so far there have been no further problems.

These links explain it better than I did :)

http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=77035

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2004/07_07_04.html