How common are food allergies, really?

According to recent studies, the prevalence of food allergies has been increasing.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) name eight common substance foods recognized by law: milk, egg, fish, shellfish, tree balmy (which include walbalmy), peabalmy, wheat, and soybean.

The FDA have estimated that these foods and their derivates are responsible for around 90 percentage of all allergic reactions.

These can range from uncomfortable — though not normally dangerous — symptoms, so much as itchy skin and diarrhoea, to a possibly dangerous reaction called hypersensitivity reaction.

In hypersensitivity reaction, the human body overreacts to substance substances. It causes extreme symptoms in different environment of the body, all at the same time. A person who is experiencing hypersensitivity reaction always requires immediate medical attention.

nevertheless, although millions of people do live with food allergies, galore more erroneously believe that they have an allergic reaction. In reality, these people are unlikely to come to any harm.

This is the conclusion of a recent study conducted by researchers from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University in Evanston, some in Illinois.

The collection, which appear in the journal JAMA Network Open, suggest that about 1 in 5 adults in the United States think that they have a food allergic reaction, piece only about 1 in 10 actually do.

19 percentage of adults believe they are allergic

The research team — led by Dr. Ruchi Gupta — unanalyzed information copied from a representative survey that collected information from more than 40,000 adults based in the U.S.

An estimated 26 million, or over 10 percentage, of U.S. adults do have a food allergic reaction, but Dr. Gupta and colleagues found that around 19 percentage of U.S. adults believe that they are allergic to certain foods.

nevertheless, their beliefs seem to be mistaken; the symptoms they report do not point in the direction of food allergies.

"While we found that 1 in 10 adults have [a] food allergic reaction, nearly doubly as galore adults think that they are allergic to foods, piece their symptoms may suggest food intolerance or other food-related conditions," explains Dr. Gupta.

Many people, she suggests, may begin to fear that they are allergic when their reactions are, in fact, due to other conditions.

"It is important to see a doctor for appropriate testing and diagnosing before wholly eliminating foods from the diet," says Dr. Gupta, adding:

"If food allergic reaction is confirmed, understanding the management is besides critical, including recognizing symptoms of hypersensitivity reaction and how and when to use epinephrin."

Dr. Ruchi Gupta

The most common allergies among adults

Of all survey respondents, even among those who according symptoms that seemed consistent with a food allergic reaction, specialists had only diagnosed allergies in around half of them.

Also, among people with clinically diagnosed food allergies, under 25 percentage held a prescription for epinephrin, which people use to treat severe allergic reactions.

Another absorbing finding of the study is that about half of the adults with food allergies had developed at least one of their allergies in adulthood.

"We were amazed to find that adult-onset food allergies were so common. More research is needful to understand why this is occurring and how we mightiness prevent it," says Dr. Gupta.

When they looked at the specifics of food allergies among U.S. adults, the researchers found that the most common ones were:

• shellfish (7.2 million)
• milk (4.7 million)
• peabalmy (4.5 million)
• tree balmy (3 million)
• fin fish (2.2 million)
• egg (2 million)
• wheat (2 million)
• soy (1.5 million)
• sesame (0.5 million)

"Our information show," explains Dr. Gupta, "that shellfish is the top food substance in adults, that shellfish allergic reaction normally begins in adulthood, and that this allergic reaction is remarkably common crosswise the lifespan."

Still, it remains unclear as to why so galore adults are allergic to shellfish, and how to prevent the development of this allergic reaction.

"We need more studies to clarify why shellfish allergic reaction appears to be so common and persistent among U.S. adults," Dr. Gupta concludes.