Scientists conducting most comprehensive food allergy study

For 5-year-old Sean Batson, even a grandmother’s kiss is to be feared. “My mother was wearing lipstick, and when she kissed Sean’s cheek, it broke out in hives,” said his mother, Jennifer Batson.

For 5-year-old Sean Batson, even a grandmother’s kiss is to be feared. “My mother was wearing lipstick, and when she kissed Sean’s cheek, it broke out in hives,” said his mother, Jennifer Batson.

At his first birthday party, Sean had a severe allergic reaction — hives, swollen eyes, vomiting and wheezing — to his first nibble of cake. And when a toddler with an ice cream cone touched Sean’s arm with sticky hands during a play date, the arm erupted in hives.

The daily struggle of living with Sean’s allergies to nearly unavoidable foods and food products — soy, eggs and milk, traces of which can turn up even in nonfoods like lipstick — prompted Batson and her husband, Tim, to participate in a project that scientists are calling the most comprehensive food allergy study to date.

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The international study, led by Dr Xiaobin Wang and Dr Jacqueline A Pongracic of Children’s Memorial Hospital here, is searching for causes of food allergy by looking at hundreds of families America and China. Using questionnaires and interviews, the investigators are gathering data on a broad range of environmental, genetic and health factors, among them diet, hygiene, number of pets and the children’s prenatal and postnatal medical histories.

Dr Wang says the study’s multicenter design allows researchers to look at startling variations in the prevalence and types of food allergies across diverse populations and regions.

In China, for example, skin-prick testing found that large percentages of one rural population were sensitive to shellfish (16.7 per cent) and peanuts (12.3 per cent). Yet actual food allergies in that population, as diagnosed by physicians, were all but unheard of: less than 1 per cent.

In the US, by contrast, 12 million people (4 per cent of the population) suffer from food allergies, according to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, a nonprofit information and advocacy group. “We found something unexpected,” said Dr Wang, director of the Smith Child Health Research Program at Children’s Memorial. “The apparent dissociation between high allergic sensitization and low allergic disease in this Chinese population is not seen in our two US study populations.

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“What can explain the US and China difference,” she asked. “Is it urban versus rural exposure? Diet and lifestyle? Or genetic susceptibility? These are all questions we are trying to find some clear answers for.”

For Sean Batson and his family, a recent clinical evaluation at the hospital included a skin-prick test to establish baseline data for Sean’s sister, Audrey, 1, who does not seem to have food allergies. (Neither do their parents, Tim Batson, 38, a computer programmer, and Jennifer Batson, 36, a copy editor.)

With recent data showing a marked increase in the number of food allergies, which cannot be explained by a lack of detection in years past, the institutes have begun an initiative to address food allergies as an emerging health challenge.

Although it is possible to be allergic to any food, eight foods account for 90 percent of all reactions — milk, eggs, peanuts, fish, shellfish, soy, wheat, and tree nuts like cashews and almonds.

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Up to 200 deaths each year are attributed to the most severe reaction, food-induced anaphylaxis, which also results in 30,000 trips to the emergency room. NYT