allergic reactions becoming more frequant

[chlochlo]

Hi i'm new to mumsnet i have a 20 month old DS who is allergic to egg and fish also got chronic asthma since summer DS has had sometimes several reactions per day usually just affecting the face but still distressing and a few weeks ago ended up in hospital with an anaphylatic reactions again cause unknown, saw his consultant last week but he was very reluctant about skin testing as he said the results wouldn't be reliable in an atopic child! has anyone had similar experiences.

[Twiglett]

Hello and welcome

No personal experience but I know there are a couple of posters who have severely allergic children .. certainly one of our antipodeans does .. is it Bobbybob?

[chlochlo]

he had his first reaction when he was ten months but we closely monitor his diet it just seems at moment he's living on piriton

[misdee]

we were also told that the results wouldnt be helpful in an atopic child. dd1 is noe being seen at allergy clinic next month and i am demanding the tests, as she has been hospitalised twice in the last month. dd1 is on a daily dose of loratradine, though the reactions still happen.

[tatt]

sounds totally nuts to me. Go to a clinic run by an allergy consultant and they do skin testing. It's not 100% reliable but its a first step. Problem is there are lots of people seeing atropic kids who are not proper allergy consultants. They should have had training from an allergy specialist but you wonder if some of them have.

I've posted links before to sites that will tell you where the proper allergy consultants are - cat me if you can't find it as I visit mumsnet rarely - was just interested in the recent fuss in the papers over she who must not be named.

[chlochlo]

whats lotradine? is it any better than the piriton?

[misdee]

its the same as benedryl, doesnt makw thwem drowsey. dd1 wasw perscribed it by the allergy specialist.

[Pudmog]

Zirtek(citirizine) has been our saving gace. It is long acting and non-drowsy. Ds has this in the morning and in the evening has drowsy short acting ucerax(hydroxizine) and his life is vastly improved. Ds has various allergies and chronic asthma and eczema (although on the surface his skin looks great, his itch deep down NEVER goes and he is only just beginning to sleep longer than 50 minutes at a time and he is nearly 2)

[chlochlo]

yeah forgot to add ds has eczema too on dermol bath and lotion, hydrocortisone, elecon and epederm. (not sure on spellings )

[Chandra]

DS has eczema, asthma and a multitude of food allergies, and I find it crazy that they have told you that results wouldn't be reliable in an atopic child, if he was not atopic you wouldn't need the tests.

I think ANY test has certain degree of unreliability but I think that you will agree with me that it's better to know half truths than nothing at all.

DS had 3 tests:

-ELISA. Expensive, and IMO the most inaccurate of the 3, but the only commercialy available at the time we were desperate for an appointment that took 18m to take place. It wasn't a waste of money though, it gave us a clear idea of which could be the most problematic elements.

-RAST. More accurate, and in our experience the most reliable. We ordered RAST tests for the foods that scored the highest grade in the ELISA test. The results confirmed allergies to all the elements on the list.

-Kinesiology. Well, I make the apointment several times and cancelled afterwards because I couldn't trust it, at the end I decided to give it a try mostly thinking in a possible alternative treatment to help DS instead of "confirming" what we already knew. Kinesiology tests "results" were almost the same as the ELISA test. No treatment given just strongly advised to avoid those allergens.

-Skin prick. The test prefered by our NHS consultant as the most acurate and the only one he would accept as reliable. We were 18m in the waiting list for this one. Funny thing with this test is that it confirmed the results of the RAST test but denied the allergy to milk, which incidentally is the food for which DS shows the most immediate and noticeable reaction!

The most annoying thing of all this process was to have the doctors saying that these or that tests results were not reliable and at the end, they were. We don't consider the money spent in test a waste, quite the contrary, if we had just waited for the skin prick test to take place DS would have had to go through another 18m of misery, which was avoided thanks to the first "inaccurate test"'s result.

[Gwu]

Hi There

My son is 3 years old and has asthma, hayfever, eczema and food allergies (dairy, eggs, soya, tomatoes, fish, nuts).

The skin prick test may be unreliable if the child's had steroids or protopics applied to the skin or has had antihistamines. You need to steer clear of these for a few days but they should brief you on all that.

I am steering clear of all tests because either they're unreliable or they're too stressful for all. For the RAST test, it took 3 nurses to hold my son down and 2 to take the blood and it took 45 minutes. Guess what, they lost the blood samples and asked us to go through it all again. No thanks. He had a skin prick test and RAST tests at 9 months old but some results contradicted each other (e.g. milk - RAST very allergic, skin prick not very allergic, real life - if he even touches milk or cheese his lips and eye lids swell and he has an asthma attack).

Sorry to go on and on but DS's allergies has totally affected our lives.

[chlochlo]

seen my gp this morning he said hospital won't do the tests on ds because he is highley sensitive and the tests could be fatal also said that he would probably be allergic to most things and therfore not be able to eat much. Its just I'm fed up of waiting for a reaction after every meal had a bad reaction after breakfast this morning and is now on three day course of steriods. I just feel so helpless.

[SydSnow]

If it's any consolation, my sister was horribly allergic as a baby/child (her egg allergy was so bad she couldn't even touch the shell of an egg) and she grew out of it over time.
We also found that moving to a country with a warm climate made a massive difference, although that is obviously not always an option.
It's a huge strain on the whole family, I know, so I wish you all the best.

[Chandra]

Chochlo get yourself a better consultant, this one is barking mad!, strong reactions are the reason why skin prick tests and food challenges take place in risk controlled areas in hospitals where they have the personnel and equipment to deal safely with them.

The allergies are not the result of the tests, yeah your DS may end up with a very restricted diet (as my DS) BUT it would be a safe diet. The fact that you don't have a diagnose doesn't mean you are not allergic.

Please contact your Primary Care Trust, these person should not be allowed to give allergy advice. If your son has anaphylactic reactions and is having them more frequently he can not ask you just to wait and see, or to pretend that things will be fine, he is seriously risking the life of your child by providing such advice.

Fuming on your behalf.

[alison222]

DS had skin prick tests at 17mths. They confirmed the consultants suspicians about some allergies. tehy did food, pollen and dust. He is allergic to eggs, fish,almonds and sesame. he has outgrown the soya allergy and the sensitivity to dairy which aggravated his excema.
he is now 5.8 and they re test every 12-18mths in a hospital setting.
I am surprised they wont do any tests at all.

[Gwu]

When DS was anything from 12 months to 2.5 years old, I found that some days, I could feed him a meal with no reaction whatsoever and then on other days, he'd react very badly to it with horrible skin rashes (even though it was exactly the same meal from the same batch of food). I was told that on some days, his body may be fighting something or the pollution may be worse or he may have had a bad night's sleep hence his allergies may be worse and therefore a substance on one day may be ok but not on another. He's not so bad now as it happens about once a week but back then it was every other day.

I do feel for you. I've just totally given up trying to figure out what triggers his eczema/asthma though we know roughly now but that may well be because he's slightly less allergic now at 3.5 years old than he was.

As the others have said, do try to get another consultant but don't think you're missing out on a lot if you don't get the RAST and skin prick test. We found that even though he abstains on all substances that came up positive on the RAST and skin prick that they did to him at 9 months, he still has eczema, asthma etc and weird itchy rashes that come and go within a day.

I do hope it gets better for you with time.

[chlochlo]

Thanks for all the help and advice it really helps to talk to people who are going through the same I will ring hospital tomorrow see if i get more joy there.

[threebob]

I would also recommend zyrtec, we have a generic version. I would also crush up tablets rather than give a very allergic child all the rubbish that's in the syrups.

Read Fed Up by Sue Dengate - she is the failsafe diet guru and is essential reading if you are planning an exclusion diet. It takes a long time, but is ultimately more use to find out what and how much a child can tolerate than skin pricks.

Rast tests are not dangerous at all as they take the blood and then test it away from the child. Ignore any consultant who says the blood test would be too stressful - they obviously haven't experienced an anaphylactic reaction personally.

[Chandra]

Threebob, is Zyrtec the same as Piriton? if so what dose you use for your DS? (desperately trying to find a non liquid version Piriton for a trip involving flights)

[threebob]

It's not the same - we don't have piriton here. It's citirizine - wonderful stuff. Half a tablet is a full child's dose. I hide it inside a white marshmallow. Actually it's funny now that ds hides it himself.

[Chandra]

Thank you Will try to find it tomorrow!

[threebob]

Ask about a generic or get on prescription - it's stupidly expensive.

[Chandra]

Thanks, have you heard of Virlix?
[sorry for the hijack ]

[threebob]

No, never heard of it. Sorry.

[tatt]

well not testing because of the risk makes more sense than saying the results wouldn't be reliable. Still that is why they test in hospital and why they do it with minute quanties of the allergen and with resus facilities available. Taking blood from a young child is traumatic but a good clinic has ways to help cope with that - like videos for them to watch and "magic cream" to reduce the pain. Best help I can offer is to say join the anahylaxis campaign, ask if you can have the phone number for the local organiser, make contact and see if there is a halfway decent doctor anywhere near you. Unfortunately the best place I know doesn't see private patients or I'd say it would be worth going there.

[Gwu]

What is the point in going through the trauma of various tests when the results are unreliable?

Also, a highly allergic child may well be allergic to the 'magic cream' and for some children, even applying that is a big fight.

Many highly allergic children have been in and out of hospital many times so they know exactly what's going to happen when the nurse puts on those gloves and no amount of videos, play specialists or toys is going to distract the child.