Each year in this country, 200,000 people require emergency medical care for an allergic reaction to food, and experts say the problem is growing. Nearly 6 million children under the age of 18 have food allergies – one in 13 or roughly two in every classroom. That’s why the University of Virginia has developed a special training program for teachers. It’s being tested in and around Charlottesville and could soon be offered nationwide. Sandy Hausman has that story.
When Lena Jackson was born nine years ago, her parents had no clue that she was allergic to anything, but when she turned one, her mother recalls a startling discovery.
“On her first birthday we did the celebratory cake – had all of our friends over. She took one bite and immediately broke out in hives, head to toe,” Kelly Jackson recalls.
The family soon found there were other foods that could be even more dangerous for Lena -- peanuts, tree nuts. sesame, soy, cow’s milk and anything containing gluten.
Doctors see a growing number of children who are allergic to these and other foods. Between 1997 and 2011, the rate of food allergies in kids increased by 50%, and tree nut allergies more than tripled. At the University of Virginia Dr. Alice Hoyt says our immune systems may be evolving in response to a changing way of life.
“We as humans used to spend a lot more time outdoors, breathing in the air, running around, and now we’re much more indoor creatures, and when you’re indoors you’re just exposed to very different things than when you’re outdoors,” she explains.
And, of course, we’re eating more processed foods:
“Processing some foods makes them more or less allergenic, " Hoyt says. "Roasting peanuts makes them more allergenic, but baking egg, baking cow’s milk makes it less allergenic because of the way it changes those teeny, tiny proteins.”
Whatever the reason, food allergies are hard on families. Kelly Jackson and her husband are in the restaurant business, but they rarely eat out with their children, and Lena isn’t allowed to have the same food as her friends.
“You know every kid eats peanut butter crackers of peanut butter and jelly, and her allergy is so severe that even if she would touch a table that had peanut butter on it, it could cause her to have a life-threatening reaction,” Kelly Jackson says.
Fortunately, the family has found a suitable substitute for peanut butter.
“Sun butter is just like peanut butter, except it’s made out of sunflower seeds," Lena explains.
Her lunch box may also contain an apple, some fresh veggies and gluten free crackers.
Lena knows she must be careful about her meals.
“If I eat eggs, I will get head to toe body hives, which are these little bumps that are very itchy, and when you itch them they spread, and so you can’t itch them, and then if I eat nuts my throat will swell, and I can’t breathe,” she says.
The family also avoids air travel after a traumatic trip home when Lena was four.
“When we booked the ticket, when we got there, we talked to the ticket counter," Kelly Jackson recalls. " We let the head stewardess know. We were sitting there and the stewardess and pilot came back and said, ‘I’m sorry. You’re going to have to get off the plane.’ I said, ‘What?’ and the pilot said, ‘Well if her allergy is life threatening, I don’t want to be responsible if something happens in the air,’ and they kicked us off the plane.”
But she says the world is changing now – accommodating a flood of children with food allergies.
“I just sent Wegman’s, a local grocery store in town that just opened, a Facebook message and said, ‘Hey, loving your place, love your produce. You have great gluten-free options, but it’s hard for us to navigate the store with my 9-year-old, because she’s allergic to nuts, and you have nuts at the entrance and at the cash register, and I can’t avoid those places. I immediately got a call back from the general manager. He said he took all the nuts from the entrance, took nuts from some cash register lanes, creating completely nut-free lanes, and I visited him today in the store, and he walked me around the store so I could offer any more suggestions.”
And as scientists work to develop new treatments for food allergies, Dr. Hoyt has begun training teachers and administrators on the simple but life-saving use of a drug called epinephrine. The program is called Code Ana – short for anaphylaxis – a condition in which food allergies cause the airways to swell, making it hard to breathe.
“The only treatment for anaphylaxis is epinephrine, and epinephrine when administered from an auto injector like an epi-pen has an incredible safety profile, because it’s already the right dose. You’re not trying to do it IV or anything like that. It’s incredibly safe,” Hoyt says.
The key is to act quickly, and schools need to have a plan in place – not only to deal with allergic reactions but to respond when students have seizures, asthma attacks and other urgent medical problems.
Hoyt compares it to a fire drill or an intruder alert. "If there is a medical emergency at the school," she says, "the first first responders, the teachers, can get to the child quickly and with the best medications for that child until EMS arrives.”
With support from the University of Virginia and the American Academy of Pediatrics, she’s been testing Code Ana in Charlottesville and Albemarle County but hopes to take the training program national.