allergic asthma - at what age did your dc show signs of it?

[whenwillisleepagain]

I have posted this on allergies section too. Sorry for doubling up, but just keen to make contact with someone who has experience of this.

For the first time in a few years I'm feeling despondent about DS's allergies. He was found to be peanut allergic at 5 months (when we tried to enrol for the LEAP peanut allergy study), had a reaction of some sort at nursery a year later, which resulted in referral to the allergy clinic, and over the last few years he's been basically well and robust, although the list of allergies has grown - fish, nuts, eggs, house dust mites and tree pollen (a bit borderline with grass pollen and horses). He had a phase of viral wheezing 18 - 24 months, with two trips to A&E, nebuliser, pred, etc. Then we settled into a groove of IMO, well-managed allergic life - antishistamines in hayfever season, v low dose of preventer inhaler, and just being well and his early eczema greatly improving.

He started Reception class in Sept and I think one of the things that set me off was the epipen training with school nurse, which of course I greatly appreciated, but seeing lots of anaphylaxis photos and hearing people basically talking about administering an epipen to my child.The other thing is he's been a bit wheezy recently and is considerably stepped up on preventer inhaler. I had a useful talk with asthma uk nurse because I was wondering about the levels of preventer but also wondering if this was a blip due to starting school. She was very helpful but also explained that allergic asthma shows itself from 5 on, which was certainly my experience as a child. I know things have changed greatly since the early 1970s in terms of preventers, relievers, things that didn't exist then, but I am a bit gloomy about where we could be heading. Any tips or cheer?

thanks and sorry this is long.

Hello :)

My dd has allergic asthma, diagnosed at 3yo.

Her list of allergens is a lot shorter than your sons, and she too just started school this year.

Who prescribed the inhalers for your ds? We went through the speedy clinic and then to a respiratory consultant at the hospital that prescribed her steroid inhaler, a tablet called montelukast that is used to help control allergy related asthma, and we were given an asthma plan. If you do not have a plan, and if it sounds like his mess need reviewing you should be going back to whomever prescribed them.

My cheery advice is that our old (brilliant) GP told me that children with early onset asthma tend to be the ones that grow out of it. I do hope it holds true!

Another thing to bear in mind is that the respiratory side of things tend to deteriorate to some extent over the winter. It doesn't necessarily indicate a downward trend iyswim?

It is tough, but you sound like you're doing all the right things :)

That should be allergy clinic... They certainly weren't speedy!

mess meds

I should probably also add that whilst the extra meds do seem a bit depressing at times, the difference now that her asthma is controlled is staggering.

We spent one winter (pre-diagnosis) in and out of hospital (often blue-lighted) with chest infections, bronchiolitis, pneumonia... I haven't had to give her pred for months

MrsPWAF thank you - you are the voice of reason and cheer I need. Prescribed meds are Loratidine 5ml daily, recently recommended by allergy nurse at hospital to take all year round. From GP we have Clenil 100mg (brown inhaler) 1-4 puffs, but I've stepped up to 6 while DS has a cold. And salbutamol for when it's needed. Asthma UK nurse who I emailed and spoke to on phone said I was doing right things but shouldn't be on 6 brown puffs for too long without considering seretide or montelukast. This was a recent step up from a total of 200mg of clenil, which worked well for best part of 2 years. Having done two admissions via A&E with viral wheeze when DS was a toddler, I am keen to avoid but equally to keep a sense of perspective about what the future holds - ie it's not doom and gloom and there is no reason for DS's asthma, which ironically he doesn't actually have a diagnosis of yet, to be completed controlled.

I think one of the issues is that whenever we've seen the allergy consultant in the past, wheeziness has not been an issue, so it's not been discussed. Apologies if I said this earlier, but I think we will be seeing him again in a few weeks time to get some blood test results. My sense is that the most productive way forward is to work with both GP and consultant to get best outcome for DS. Thank you again, I have never talked much about this issue with another parent although I watch some of the threads on here with interest, and of course I'm aware there are LOs out there with much more problematic and complicated asthma than my DS.