Conflicting advice at 2 different hospitals re nut allergy

[Lilpickle08]

Hello

My 4 year old daughter is allergic to peanuts and prawns and we have had all the RAST tests for other allergens (ie tree nuts) and she's tested negative. We were really pleased with the tree nut diagnosis and felt we could relax a little bit again. The consultant told us that our daughter would be fine to eat tree nuts and to carry on giving them her or to start introducing if we hadn't already.

However, we were referred to the specialist allergy clinic in the meantime (something I had been pushing for) and came back from that appointment yesterday. The specialist told us to ban nuts entirely and told us our daughter had a 40% chance of devleoping a tree nut allergy. He also advised us that our 2 year old son has a 40% chance of developing a peanut allergy too. So now we're in bits again!

Don't know what advice to believe anymore! Obviously we should probably go with the specialist clinic advice and do the total nut ban, but I'm scared of our daughter becoming sensitised to all nuts so that she eventually becomes allergic to everything! (hey, but what do I know?!).

Arrghh, all this conflicting advice is so confusing! Anybody have any pearls of wisdom?

Thank you x

It's so confusing isn't it? It might be worthwhile looking at the health Q & A's and webchats on here. (Look at the purple and blue header bar at the top of your screen and choose 'news and events'). There is a Q&A with Andrew Clarke and a webchat with Adam Fox that might help to put things into perspective for you. I have found them really helpful whenever I start to descend into a blind panic about ds's allergies!

Sorry I meant to add that they deal with many aspects of nut allergy as well as talking about siblings of nut-allergic children...