Many Parents Who Think They Have Food Allergies Actually Don't

When kids have food allergies, the children’s parents may think they have food allergies too, but this is often not the case, a new study found.
The study, which involved only parents of kids with food allergies, showed that many parents who reported also having food allergies didn’t actually have any. In fact, when the researchers conducted allergy tests on parents who thought they had these allergies, more than 70 percent of these parents tested negative.
The study calls into question the reliability of people’s self-reports of allergies, the researchers said. The findings are also surprising, given that parents whose children have food allergies might be expected to have more knowledge than people in general about what counts as a food allergy, the researchers said.

What’s more, the results suggest that a common practice may be a problem: Doctors often ask parents if they have food allergies as a way to determine whether their children will be at higher risk for developing allergies, the researchers said. “Our study suggests that using parental report of food allergy as a risk factor is unreliable,” the researchers wrote in the Oct. 12 issue of the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. [7 Allergy Myths and the Truth Behind Them]
The study involved nearly 2,500 parents of children with food allergies who lived in Chicago. The parents filled out a survey in which they answered questions about substances they were allergic...

Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - October 14, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news