Food allergies: a real life issue

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Food allergies: a real life issue

West Haven, Conn. (WTNH) – WEST HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — What may appear harmless like an egg or cracker, could be deadly for someone with food allergies. It’s Food Allergy Awareness Week, and West Haven Schools are among those providing a safe environment in the classroom and lunchroom.

School systems like West Haven take a progressive, yet sensible approach when it comes to protecting students with food allergies.

“We don’t ban food here in terms of banning saying, we have a no peanut school or .. we would be banning everything and secondly, because it gives people a false sense of security when people think there’s nothing there then there’s nothing to be done,” said Donna Kosiorowski, Supervisor for School Health Services.

Instead, the focus at Pagels School and district wide is teaching kids how to live in an imperfect environment. The event was organized by Sen. Gayle Slossberg. At the core of it is a close relationship with families, the school nurse and health care providers. They make up an awareness team that draws up a blueprint for the child’s specific health needs.

Concerned mother Kim Parlee says, “prior to the school nurse, we met with the school nurse. Every year we meet with the incoming teacher, we discuss all the aspects of her day, we talk about the lunchroom, the snacks.”

Parlee’s daughter Kameryn is allergic to peanuts. She carries an epi-pen to reverse a life threatening reaction.

“Just like a weapon can take a child’s life, food can take my child’s life,” said Parlee. “It’s never just a burger or a cracker, she can’t eat it unless we read it.”

Eight foods account for about 90 percent of allergic reactions; milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat.

There are a number of contributing factors to the increasing number of people now allergic to food.

Food Allergy expert Chris Bartley says, “some are hereditary, but the hygiene factor always comes into play. We have an an environment that has lots of chemicals, lots of immunizations or cleaning, lots of things, the basic piece of that is maybe we’re taxing our immune system, but not taxing our immune system so that we are weakening it.”

Every school in West Haven has a school nurse that monitors the safety plan for kids with food allergies. With some children, they’ve contacted the local EMS with parental permission, to share the child’s health information, just in case there’s an emergency call for that student.

Mouse tests

Food allergies pose a serious and growing problem in the West. Many foods can lead to allergic reactions and this situation is further complicated by so-called cross-reactions, whereby an allergy to one particular food can trigger allergic reactions to another food. There are no treatments available for food allergies, but the establishment of two mouse models can be used to develop and test new forms of treatment, for example vaccines.

Around 4-8% of children and 1-4% of adults in the West suffer from food allergy. The most common causes of food allergy are peanuts, nuts, soya, milk, fish, shellfish, flour and eggs, but a total of over 170 different foods have been found to result in allergic reactions. In addition, there are the allergies that arise as a result of cross reactions to other types of food. The only form of treatment is to avoid all consumption of the food that the person is allergic to. Allergenic substances that are hidden in processed foods therefore pose a particular problem for people allergic to foods.

Nina E. Vinje’s doctoral research has led to the establishment of two mouse models for food allergy to the legumes lupin and Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum). These models have been used to test whether legumes such as soya, peanuts, Fenugreek and lupin can trigger allergic reactions in mice that are already allergic to lupin and Fenugreek respectively. It is important to establish good animal models for food allergies because the development of an allergic immune response depends on a complicated interaction between types of cells in several different organs. Vinje has made every effort to reduce the use of laboratory animals to a minimum during her project. For this reason, she used an advanced statistical method to develop the models in order to gain as much information as possible from the use of as few animals as possible.

Food Allergies with Bill & Sheila

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