allergy testing, anyones baby had this done?

[alibo]

just interested to know if anyone who has allergies in the family has had baby tested for food allergies etc. also, how accurate are these tests?

for an allergy test to work in reality your baby needs to have been exposed to the allergen b4 hand. otherwise you'll get a wide range of things he would react to in the test which he would do later.

wouldnt do later

thanks misdee; so there is no point in having him tested now for common allergens, ie wheat, citrus, tomatoe etc if he hasn't already had them?

probably not. it can give false results. how old is he?

10 mths but was born nearly 4 weeks prem

why are you so worried about allergies can i ask?

dh has asthma, bad excema , rhinitis, hay fever, nut allergy. his excema was very bad as a child, so we are being careful with potentially allergic foods as ds is more at risk of having an allergy with dh being so "atopic"

also concerned about making his excema worse

my dh is also atopic. still suffers from asthma/ezcema/hayfever. i have to say that we found food makes no difference to dd's ecema. dd1 is sensitive to food colourings, and breaks out in nettle rash. we avoid nuts for the same reasons as you, but they are fine with most foods. does your ds have any other signs of atopy apart from the eczema? dd1 has atopic shiners, she also has a stuffy nose.

if you are concerned it coud be worth taking your ds to see a specialist.

www.yorktest.com - this is fabulous and will identify intolerances and allergies. You will need a good nutritionist or naturopath to decipher the results though. www.babydirectory.com will have a list of people under complementary medicine that can do this for you.

misdee, whats an atopic shiner, and what kind of specialist would you recommend?

atopic shiners, well dd1 has permanment black shadows round her eyes and creases as well. they get darker during a reaction, like hayfever times etc. i think there is a subject in the allergy section about atopy.
It worth getting referred to a specialist through your gp, but they can be funny about referrals. dd1 sees a dermotologist at one hospital twice a year for her eczema, and sees an allergy specialist twice a year at another hospital. before she was referred she was sent to the local hospital who assessed her and then referred her. there basically isnt enough allergy specialists available on the NHS. If you can go private then i would, but persoanlly wouldnt go thro someone just doing testing. (sorry naturedoc). what area are you in? i'll see what i can find for you later.

atopy