Category: Allergies

Posted on

Avoid Ticks – Here’s Another Reason

We know ticks carry disease.  If you live in the Southeastern United States, you know to avoid ticks.  You are particularly aware of the risks of Lyme disease as well as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.  (As an aside, why do they call it “Rocky Mountain” when you are more apt to find it in the Appalachian or other eastern mountains and not the Rockies? But I digress).

Well, researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Virginia (Susan Wolver, MD, Diane Sun, MD, and others) have discovered another reason to avoid ticks. Their research indicates that the bite of a Lone Star tick (named for the spot on its middle, not its location in the Lone Star state) can cause subsequent anaphylaxis when eating red meat.

What is even more interesting is that the IgE antibodies are as a result of the carbohydrate alpha-gal.  This is the first time a carbohydrate as been identified as an allergy trigger.  All other triggers are proteins.  Further complicating matters, these people have a negative skin prick test to meat. This makes making a diagnosis even more difficult.  As if diagnosis weren’t tricky enough, the symptoms occur between three to six hours after exposure, much longer than usual for food allergy.  All because you forgot to avoid ticks!

Read all about it here in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

If you are outside in wooded areas or fields, be sure to check carefully when you come inside for ticks.  Ticks like to hide in folds of skin.  They should be removed so that the entire tick is removed, and the head is not left behind.  But of course you know this, you just didn’t know the link between tick bites and allergy to red meat. That is until now.  Yet another reason to avoid ticks.

Until next time!
Posted on

Back to School Part 2 – When Good Kids Get A Bad Cold

If you think it is hard to drive away and leave your son or daughter at college for the first time, just wait until you get home.  You will walk inside your house and no matter how many people live there it will feel empty. 

It is especially empty if it is your last child to leave home.  Suddenly the house feels enormous and you feel small.  You feel miserable and want to cry. 

If you think you feel bad then, just wait until they call you sick with their first away-from-home really bad cold.  Now you really feel bad.

When your kids were small and had a cold, you babied them.  Ran vaporizers to help them breathe, sponged them off the reduce their fever, read them stories, and feed them chicken soup. 

That very first cold after moving away from college will be as miserable for you as it is for your child.  Since you can’t be there to take care of them, plan in advance so that have everything on hand to take care of themselves.  Caring for your own cold is a part of growing up when you think about it.

Bad Cold Emergency Kit
 

So, pack up an emergency kit.  Now the cold emergency kit is a little different than your standard emergency kit. It doesn’t have bandages or antibiotic creams. Those are important items and should be in the standard emergency kit, but what I am talking about is the Cold Emergency Kit. 

So, pack them in a small box that they can store out of the way of heat and sunlight.  In it put what they will need to tend to their own cold.  Start with a small box of tissue.  If you have a preferred brand or type of cold medicine, make sure it is in the kit along with your own handwritten note on how to use it. 

For example, my daughter has always been small for her age, so I never gave her the adult dose of any over-the-counter medication the first time around.  Now, if she bought a box of cold medicine on her own and didn’t know this, she might take the recommended 2 pills instead of 1.  That is why it is important that you communicate this type of information in writing in the emergency kit so if they are self-medicating for the first time they know these things. 

Also, depending on the state where they are going to school, many of the “D” formulas require a signature and an in-state driver’s license for the purchase of formulas that contain pseudoephedrine.  Keep this in mind if your child is attending college in another state! 

I also think it is a good idea to include cough drops or throat lozenges for that sore throat (bonus points if you get the ones with Vitamin C) and a microwaveable “cup o soup” in the flavor your kid prefers and a thermometer. 

The thermometer is important because they need to know when they have a fever that is high enough to warrant the attention of the school’s Health Office. Also, if your kid has allergies, they need to know the difference between cold symptoms and allergy symptoms.

That thermometer comes in handy when determining the two because allergies don’t cause any elevation in body temperature. Tuck in a little love note at the bottom that assures them that a cold runs for 7 to 10 days and you can’t cure it, but they can focus their efforts on relieving symptoms.

You can’t be there with them while they are going through that first cold and as hard as it is on you, it’s an important step in their growth as truly independent adults.

Til Next Time!

 
Posted on

Atopic Dermatitis, Peanuts, and Genetics

Allergists and immunologists for years have noted the association of skin conditions such as atopic dermatitis and eczema and food allergies, especially allergies to peanuts.  Heredity has also been a suspect in both conditions.  But now there is more than anecdotal evidence.

A large group of researchers working in the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, and Ireland published their findings last year in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.  They were attempting to identify if the genetic coding for filaggrin is a candidate gene in the etiology of peanut allergy.  Filaggrin is a protein in epithelial cells. You can read the entire article here.  The researchers concluded that FLG null mutations represent a highly significant genetic risk factor for atopic dermatitis and also are the single most significant genetic risk for peanut allergy that has been identified to date.

The reason I am writing about this today is because I just read a post two days ago by a respected allergist that indicated that some food allergies may disappear as a child matures.  He specifically mentioned that this did not apply to peanut allergy. Could it be that the epithelial cells that line the digestive tract are the real culprit?

I’m not a doctor and I don’t have the answers. I do know that if you have peanut allergy or atopic dermatitis researchers are hard at work decoding the causes to find the cure.

Just something to think about….until next time!