Paed told us to reintroduce egg. Now DD1 has had a huge reaction to raw egg.

[suiledonne]

DD1 was diagnosed with an egg allergy at 14 months by RAST & skin prick tests following a reaction to scrambled egg. She has a history of asthma & eczema.

This summer (she was 3 in May) the paediatrician repeated her blood tests and said her egg allergy is now very mild and we could start to reintroduce egg to her diet.

Over the past couple of months I have allowed her to try foods with some egg such as her sister's birthday cake and she seemed fine.

So after having no eggs in the house for two and a half years I bought eggs last week. DD1 is fascinated by them never having seen eggs up close before.

I went out for a couple of hours last night and had a text from DH looking for the antihistamine. DD1 broke an egg in the box. He doesn't think much went on her skin but she immediately broke out in a huge reaction on her arms and legs.

He cleaned her up and gave her the antihistamine and she fell asleep. When I came home her face and eyes were all puffed up so I called the out of hours doctor.

He told me to watch her for swelling of tongue or throat in case her breathing was affected but that she would probably be fine.

This morning her eyes are still really puffy and she is exhausted.

I am so angry about what happened. She is clearly still quite allergic to eggs yet the paed spoke of it as it was nothing to worry about and to just start giving her eggs.

Where do we go from here? Back to being an egg-free house for sure but I think we need more specialist advice.

The paed also told us that dd1 showed a mild reaction to dairy and wheat but advised us not to remove them from her diet. I am starting to question all his advice now.

What would you do?

Hold on - she didn't react when she ate cooked egg
Sounds like you just need to avoid raw egg for now

Egg allergy is one that people tend to grow out of

DD2 was allergic to egg which I discovered having fed her scrambled egg when she was about 8 months. She had already eaten things like cake containing (very well) cooked eggs at this point so I just continued to give her these. I believe it's common for the reaction only to be to lightly cooked egg. I was told to try rubbing a very small amount of raw egg on her arm to test if she reacted, but I just didn't want to. I waited until she was about 8 or 9, when I reckoned she would have outgrown it if it was ever going to happen. She loves eggs now!

We were never an egg free household - she just knew she wasn't allowed to eat eggs.

I can understand why you are upset by the paed, but my understanding is that allergy testing is very inexact.

It is very irresponsible of your paed to just suggest reintroducing egg when your dd has a history of asthma as this is one of the things they are most wary of when thinking about which people might have severe reactions or not.

The RAST test does not tell anything about the likely severity of the reaction, only about the likeihood (sp?) of having a reaction.

With her background they should have done an oral challenge under controlled conditions in a hospital where they could have tried her with raw egg, but put a canula in her arm so that they can administer drugs quickly if necessary.

I would ask for a referal to a paediatric allergy specialist not just a standard paed, as the regular paediatricians are not always well versed in allergies. Then you will be able to get much, much better advice. I would also be really upset by this paediatrician - the situation your dd was put in could have turned out much worse.

ds had egg allergy as a baby, and also had a severe reaction to raw egg when he touched some as a toddler. We kept him right off all egg, raw & cooked, for years & gradually reintroduced it when he was about 10+ with no problem although he still hates the taste of anything with a lot of egg in (merangues, quiche, egg custard etc). The advice we had at the time was something along the lines of the longer we kept him completely off eggs the more likely he was to grow out of it, but to be honest I'm not sure the doctor really knew what he was talking about either.

Thanks for the replies.

We originally saw an allergy specialist when we got the diagnosis and he told us that she would have to avoid all contact with egg. he seemed to take it very seriously at the time.

I don't see how it can be possible for her to have such a major reaction to a timy amount of raw egg and yet it be ok for her to eat egg.

I fear it would just lead to a worse reaction in the future.

Am going to look for a referral to an allergy specialist but think it will take forever.

The original one we saw was privately but can't afford that now.

It's the protein in egg that she's allergic to, and if you think about it, raw egg is very different from cooked egg. The cooking process changes the structure of the proteins and makes them, for some people, less allergenic. That's why some allergic people can eat sponge cake, for example, especially as the amount consumed is relatively small.

It does sound as though you should have been offered a food challenge in hospital rather than being left to fend for yourself. Where is it you live?

Poor you.

It is possible to be fine with cooked egg and react very badly to raw, like suiledonne says, cooking can change the shape of the egg proteins so the body doesn't recognise them as egg.

I would push for a pediatric allergy referral - you may have to travel for this but they could at least tell you how far then you could decide if you want to.

At any rate, next time you are advised to re-introduce egg (I can understand that this is probably the last thing on earth that you want to do, but the time will probably come when she does outgrow this) I would insist that this is done as a formal 'challenge' at the hospital. In fact, I am quite horrified that it wasn't this time.

like SkipToMyLou says...