Allergy Tests and Food Diets: What Parents Need To Know

By Bara Vaida
WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Hansa D. Bhargava, MD

Angela Moore’s pediatrician was on the phone, relaying some frightening news about her 8-year-old son.

Dennis’ blood test results showed he was allergic to corn, wheat, watermelon, and all tree nuts.

“I was totally freaked out,” says Moore, who lives in suburban Atlanta. “I was so scared that he would stop breathing if he ate the wrong thing.”

Moore ran to her local pharmacy and bought three packages of EpiPens, which treat severe and life-threatening allergic reactions. She also removed the red-flag foods from Dennis’ diet. Still, Moore was puzzled by the test results. Dennis had seasonal allergies, but he'd never reacted to food, except watermelon, which caused his lips to swell. A week earlier he had eaten a peanut butter sandwich without a problem.

A few months after this happened last May, Moore sought a second opinion with pediatric allergist Luqman Seidu, MD. He's the head of Omni Allergy, Immunology and Asthma in Atlanta.

After checking the child’s blood results and learning his medical history, Seidu told Moore that Dennis wasn’t allergic to anything.

Relieved, Moore has since let her son have corn, wheat, and nuts. “Had I not had that mother’s intuition that I needed some better answers, I would have been totally changing his diet, and I would have been paranoid about everything that he was putting his mouth,” she says.

'Nutritional Consequences'

With the rise in food allergies over the past decade, allergists trained to treat children say they are seeing more cases where kids are being wrongly advised by pediatricians and primary care doctors to stop eating certain foods.

In November 2014, a task force of the nation’s allergists repeated that doctors should not use lab tests alone to diagnose food allergies. It also strongly recommended that doctors tell parents to speak with a nutritionist if they're considering a food elimination diet for their child.

Doctors “must be aware of the nutritional consequences of elimination diets and certain medications… in growing children,” the group said.

“Every day I see a parent of kids who have been misdiagnosed with a food allergy,” says Seidu. Food allergy test results need to be looked at along with a child’s medical history. Also, Seidu says blood tests can be misleading. “My blood test says I’m allergic to peanuts and hazelnuts. But I’m not,” he says.

source : Allergy Tests and Food Diets: What Parents Need To Know