Allergy Update

This is Matthew's back on potential allergens.

Yeah, he definitely has some allergies. But the good news is that he didn't test positive for shrimp! Or lobster! Or milk (but then he's never had a positive skin test for milk, so I don't know that that counts, especially since he reacted to it a few weeks ago). And although his back does look pretty red and irritated, if you look closely, you'll notice that there are a couple rows of testing on the right that have almost no reactions (besides the top one on one row). These tests are for molds, fungi, dust and animals, so no allergies there.

What is he allergic to? Peanut. That's the large one on the bottom of his back. So it looks like he probably hasn't outgrown that allergy yet. He's also allergic to common grasses (those are the large ones in the middle of his back), common trees including mesquite and common weeds. That means he has seasonal allergies in the spring (from trees), the fall (from weeds) and year round (from grasses). Poor kid!

We also did some blood tests on milk and peanut. The total milk and the component milk all came back as negative (which they had on previous tests). The total peanut IgE is 0..89. This is higher than the last time we tested it in April of 2013 (it was 0.63 then) and on par with October 2012 testing. The only component result we received for peanut was ARA H2, which was 0.16. This is the component that best shows the chance of anaphylaxis. While his number is relatively low (some people are over 100!), the fact that it is non zero does mean he is at risk. We will learn more when we next talk to the allergist.