Food challenge passed!!

[trixymalixy]

I had both kids at hospital today for food challenges.

DS can now eat lentils. Not surprisingly he wasn't that excited about it.

DD can now eat hidden egg, so cake is on the menu, she was quite excited about that!

Just thought I'd share some good news and some hope.

Great! We have been told our son is too reactive for peanut challenge and it was disappointing, but pleased for you!

hooray thats great news, my approach at the moment with DD so young is to think that all allergies will stay in place so we don't get our hopes up - but it is really encouraging - one day she may eat a lentil, a cake, cheese and even dare I say it peas.

That's great. My almost 3 year old passed a baked milk challenge 4 months ago and it's great being able to bake with egg at least (still can't have milk). We started with cupcakes and then moved to fruit muffins and then to batter based things. He can now tolerate pancakes and egg used to bind things like fishcakes and I'm going to try Yorkshire pudding next.

It's so nice when you can remove one bad food.

Thanks!

I'm quite excited about the lentils, I love lentil soup and have always grumbled about not being able to bulk out bolognese with lentils as is always suggested on here.

Hi Trixy, great news about the egg!

Can I ask, at what point you got to before they decided it was a good time to try baked in egg? Also, do they think its ok for a child to eat baked in egg if they have SPT that shows they are very allergic to raw egg?

The reason I ask is, my 20 month old had a blood test 4 months ago. Egg white was 2.3.

Hes since eaten bread with egg white baked in, no problem (although he only ate two bites)

But on monday a SPT showed a large (11mm it looked quite big to be, I dont know if 11mm is considered big) to egg white.

So all in all the three things totally contradict each other.

Vair confusing.

I'm not Trixy but I can tell you my DS's situation. He first had egg at 13 months. A tiny bit of scrambled egg led to his body covered in hives and projectile vomiting. Tested (blood and skin at 16 months) and his RAST score was 3 point something (so low although not necessarily a good indicator of scale of potential reaction). Can't recall what his skin reaction was but it was large. The test was for egg in its entirety I should say.

He was retested a year later and his RAST score had dropped by something like 60%. His allergy specialist said that a drop of that size is usually a good indicator although he'd prefer to see it drop over th course of several years. But he felt there was about a 70% chance he could tolerate baked egg. So we went ahead with it a couple of months later (under his supervision). Obviously we don't have 'wet egg' yet and his doctor doesn't think he's ready for that yet.

I should also add that we are not in the UK at the moment and I know in the UK skin tests are still more widely carried out than here in the USA where the leading specialists don't feel they are that reliable on their own.

Also, my son was tested for egg in the UK at 4 months when they tested for milk. I know it's rare to test on a child so young though. Milk was very high but he did not test positive for egg (of course he hadn't been directly exposed to it anyway so the allergy hadn't yet been triggered).

Baking egg in cakes and things like that does remove many of the proteins that trigger allergies so our specialist said. So a child whose tests over time show a decrease in reaction may be at a stage when they can tolerate baked egg. Obviously I'd only suggest doing that under clinical supervision.

DDs skin prick test for egg was still positive, but they felt the wheal was small enought to test her with hidden egg, they don't do RAST tests so can't compare notes on those. DS's wheal was bigger than DD's for egg, so hey wouldn't challenge him with it, but he has tolerated egg pasta when given by mistake so I would have liked him to have been challenged with hidden egg.

Suburban mum that cant be right. My sons wheal was huge with egg white. He tolerated egg white fine.

Trixy, how big where your daughter and sons egg wheals?

That's fantastic news trixy! Thanks for sharing.

We are waiting for an appointment for baked egg challenge so it's always good to hear some positive stories. In our case, the consultant decided to do a special RAST test for a specific protein in egg rather than just egg white and as this was much lower than his usual RAST result for egg, he decided to try to the baked egg challenge. Apparently, a low result for this particular test can indicate that someone might be more likely to be able to tolerate baked egg. We'll see...

How fab trixy
Happy to give you a looooong list of dishes we crave here since going lentil-free this is the one we miss most - delish!

• fingers crossed we'll follow in your footsteps with both egg and lentils eventually.

OHforDUCKSsake - what can't be right?

I'm looking at a ruler trying to estimate from memory the sizes! DS's egg wheal was massive, it looked about 15mm to me. DD's was about 5 mm, but bigger than DS's milk wheal and he's very allergic to milk.

Annoyingly I had photographed their arms so could have shown you exactly, but deleted it last week to make room for birthday pictures.

The leading experts over here in the USA don't seem to place as much stock in skin tests. Children who have very sensitive skin can continue to react long after blood tests and food challenges have suggested the allergy has been outgrown. I'm really surprised the NhS places such an emphasis on them. I suspect it's cost but if anyone has any research/ guidance from UK allergy experts then I'd be Interested to see it.

What's the procedure in the US?

Congrats on the lentils !

And congrats on the egg.

That is good news.

Thanks! DS has just told me he told his whole class about the food challenge in his show and tell today. He's a wee star. Although I think he talked more about the magazine he got in he hospital shop as a treat than the actual food challenge .

And that backs up the fact that skin tests alone really aren't reliable.

Trixy - I can only speak for our situation and that of those I know in our local support group (many of whom have children under the care of one of the leading experts probably in the world) in that the clear preference is for annual RASt tests certainly in children under about 8. Less frequently in older children and only skin tests if the specialist feels they might add something to the picture.

DS doesn't have skin prick tests anymore as he reacts so badly to them, his whole body goes red and itchy and they were worried he might go into anaphylactic shock so now he just has annual RAST tests.

This thread gives me so much hope, but also the thought of a food challenge terrifies me too! How do you feel during the challenges?

My dd is 3 in April. Our consultant (paediatric, not immunology) does not test annually - we attend yearly, however last time my dd wasn't tested as the consultant seemed to feel that under aged 3 there is less chance that a child will have outgrown the allergy...at least this was my interpretation of what she said. My dd has only ever had skin prick tests.

We go again in March, so will see what happens then.

Great news trixy :) you must be delighted.

none of the tests are foolproof iyswim. both can result in false positives and negatives.
history of reaction etc are used to give advice to patients. The benifits of skin prick tests is that they give instant results and the allergist can give advice there and then. A blood test takes 2 weeks to find out results and needs a return appointment for advice.
blood tests are more expensive, compared to skin prick tests.
SPT are accurate with some foods than others, peanut for instance .skin prick tests have been used since the 1960s and have proved a useful tool for allergy testing. however, an immunologist is always needed to interpret the care issues for patient.

egg and growing out of it , like milk is sometimes a slow process, cooked egg exposed to high heat, esp in food manufactuers ovens chancges the protein structure. sometimes our ovens at home can let us down in that respect if a small part of egg is not completely cooked.

Harverina, I felt quite nervous as the last food challenge DS had he failed and was vomiting everywhere and quite distressed. Also because both DC were doing food challenges and I was on my own with them.

I'm quite happy with skin prick tests as DS is not very good with needles after repeatedly pulling out his cannula last time he was in hospital. We had to hold him down screaming to get it put back in several times. Taking blood would be a bit of a nightmare.

Congratulations. I am feeling quite as DS has just failed a food challenge today for sesame after the skin prock test suggested it might be fine. Ahh well....