Food Allergen information for Health Professionals

Allergic reactions to foods can give rise to diverse signs and symptoms including skin, respiratory and gastrointestinal reactions. In addition clinical information on allergic reactions to individual foods can be found in the InformAll database.

Food allergies need to be properly diagnosed and usually involves a visit to a doctor or specialist allergy nurse, who use a combination of clinical history, laboratory (specific IgE measurements) or outpatient (skin prick tests) tests and sometimes challenges with the food to confirm the diagnosis.

Unfortunately treatment usually involves avoiding the problem food as there is currently no cure available although researchers are trying to develop one (see http://www.foodallergy.org/Research/publishedresearch.html).

There is a wealth of information on food allergies for health professionals at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/foodallergy.html