- Today is National FPIES Awareness Day. FPIES stands for Food protein-induced enterocolitis syndrome and is basically a form of food allergy that affects the gastro-intestinal tract. Certain foods (not just top allergens, but potentially anything, like peas, blueberries, lamb, rice, sweet potatoes, etc.) are rejected by the body, with symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea (occasionally with blood or mucus), low blood pressure, paleness, and lethargy, sometimes leading to shock (short-term) and malnutrition (long-term) and often requiring hospitalization. (Note that these are not the same symptoms as those of an IgE-mediated food allergy, the latter of which are immediate and life-threatening.) Roughly 90 children are diagnosed with FPIES in the U.S. each year, and most (but not all) outgrow it by age 5. In the meantime, though, there are kids who won’t be able to find a single safe solid food to eat! You can find out more here, here or here.
- There are kids and teenagers (with FPIES or other restrictions) who still haven’t passed any solid food trials. What happens when insurance companies stop covering their formula?
- Here’s an interesting article on which food allergies are more likely to be outgrown.
- Can you get a food allergy from a blood transfusion? (Spoiler: it’s rare, but it can happen and, thankfully, it’s usually temporary.)
- With new technology, we could actually commercialize hypoallergenic peanuts someday.
- Had you heard about Indie Candy, an allergen-free candy maker in Alabama? They were featured on The Kitchn a while back, but their social media accounts haven’t been active in a while, though Google claims they’re still in business…
- Enjoy Life is still very much in business, though, providing allergen-free ingredients for the home cook.
- The 25 best allergy-friendly packaged foods, according to Parents magazine.
- A neat cartoon titled Gluten: The Facts and the Fad.
- Did you know that the celiac vaccine successfully completed the first phase of clinical trials? It’s based on immunotherapy, which is also used to treat some allergies.
- I’ll follow that up with 10 restaurants where you can safely eat in Montreal if you are gluten-intolerant.
- It turns out that non-celiac gluten sensitivity may actually have nothing to do with gluten. It’s probably due to another family of proteins, amylase-trypsin inhibitors (ATIs), which are found in wheat and other grains alongside gluten. I wonder if cases like these have contributed to the increased prevalence of celiac disease, just through misdiagnosing (in addition to correctly diagnosing more patients who would not have been counted before).
- On a related note: patients with celiac disease who react to gluten-free oats may actually be reacting to another protein called avenin.
- For a laugh: the Gluten-Free Museum, where works of art are reimagined to be gluten-free.
- Did you know you can test for food sensitivities at home? There’s a test kit called EverlyWell that tests for sensitivity to 96 different foods.
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