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Allergy
October 26, 2011
Free allergy seminar in Austin Thursday evening
If you’re sneezing, it could be the high mold counts. Or the ragweed. Or the fall elm. Austin’s air is an allergy sufferer’s nightmare.
A free program Thursday evening in Austin will offer residents a chance to learn more about allergies, their causes, how to test for them and treat them.
I Live Here, I Breathe Here — Living With Austin Allergies is being presented by Austin Regional Clinic and the Jewish Community Center of Austin at 7 p.m. at the JCC, 7300 Hart Lane, in Northwest Austin.
Dr. William Otto, at right, an allergy and asthma specialist at Austin Regional’s Far West Medical Tower, will lead an interactive discussion on the topic. He will take questions submitted in advance from people who register online and live from the audience.
Registration is not required but is requested so sponsors can get idea of how many people to expect. It can be done here and questions can be submitted in advance there, too.
For more information, visit the website or call Meghan Dixon at 735-8214 or e-mail her at meghan.dixon@shalomaustin.org.
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October 13, 2010
Chat allergies at 12:30 with William C. Howland MD
Can’t get no relief? Bring your questions about all things that make you sniff, sneeze and tear-up today at 12:30 when Dr. William C Howland III with the Allergy and Asthma Center of Austin joins us for a live chat.
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March 29, 2010
Food allergies: Should your child carry one or two EpiPens?
A new study suggests that children who carry doses of epinephrine to combat a food-related allergy should carry two EpiPens instead of one.
With food allergies on the rise in children, doctors get the question a lot, said Dr. Allen Lieberman of Austin. He doesn’t recommend two pens unless the child’s allergy is severe because “the EpiPens are very expensive and over 90 percent go unused,” he said. He also urged parents to make sure when they buy EpiPens to get them with expiration dates of a year or more.
The large study, published last week in Pediatrics, reviewed 605 cases of children going to the emergency room with food-related anaphylaxis at childrens’ hospitals in Boston between Jan. 1, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2006.
Most of the children were allergic to peanuts or tree nuts, and some were allergic to milk. Among children with food-related anaphylaxis who received epinephrine, 12 percent received a second dose, the study said.
Lieberman said the reason some children may need a second dose is the effects of the first pen can wear off before the child gets to the ER. Some children require oxygen and intravenous fluids at the ER, he said.
Symptoms of anaphylaxis, which can be fatal, include hives; swelling of the throat, lips, tongue, or around the eyes; and difficulty breathing or swallowing.
Lieberman said that instead of recommending that every child with a food allergy have a second EpiPen, how about having “a community EpiPen” in a school or other location, much like having an AED (automated external defibrillator)?
Children who have had a severe food reaction are prone to future severe reactions, he added. Additional information on food allergies is available on his Web site.
Lieberman said the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network is holding a walk to raise awareness and funds May 22 at Lake Park at Austin’s Mueller neighborhood, 4550 Mueller Blvd, with registration at 9 a.m. and the walk at 10.
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March 3, 2009
Got asthma, allergies? Try broccoli, study suggests
Austin allergy sufferers, could it be this easy to get relief?
Someday people who suffer from respiratory ailments — whether they are caused by pollution, pollen or pulmonary disease — might get relief just by eating broccoli if new research from the University of California at Los Angeles proves up.
The researchers report that a compound found in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, including Brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage and bok choy, seems to wield potential protective powers for various respiratory ailments. The compound is identified as sulforaphane in the study published in the March issue of the journal Clinical Immunology.
“This is one of the first studies showing that broccoli sprouts — a readily available food source — offered potent biologic effects in stimulating an antioxidant response in humans,” Dr. Marc Riedl, the study’s lead researcher and an assistant professor of clinical immunology and allergy at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said in a news release. “We found a two- to three-fold increase in antioxidant enzymes in the nasal airway cells of study participants who had eaten a preparation of broccoli sprouts.”
The paper did not report any side effects in the 65 volunteers studied.
Researchers don’t know how much broccoli a person would have to eat to gain protection, but they said they hope their work will point the way to potential treatments for a variety of respiratory ailments.
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January 21, 2009
Cedar fever got you now? The allergen seems to have claimed more victims this week
UPDATE: Contains comments from a second allergist
A Claritin tablet melted on my tongue as I dialed Austin allergy doctor Robert Cook.
Could it be that I’m an occasional sufferer of cedar fever — sensitive to the regional allergen only when the pollen count gets especially high? The sniffles, scratchy throat and the head-swathed-in-cotton feeling kicked in Monday, not long after a 90-minute bicycle ride, followed by a 30-minute stroll and an hour at an outdoor coffeehouse. To top it off, I slept in the same T-shirt I wore for the bike ride, so I slept little Monday night.
Wouldn’t you know, the cedar count Monday was 1,901 grains per cubic meter of air, according to KVUE. That’s the highest count so far this season. Anything above 1,000 is considered high.
On Tuesday, the count fell to 818 and today, it’s 231 grains per cubic meter.
Cook says it’s possible for a person to suddenly notice cedar fever symptoms. “It depends on how allergic you are and how high the counts are,” he said. “Patients who are extremely allergic may have symptoms with very low cedar counts. People with less degree of sensitivity … are only starting” to notice symptoms.
Dr. Dennis Dyer says, though, that a person with cedar fever will have it every year and that anyone who is truly allergic has had symptoms for at least the past three weeks.
“I had a whole crop of people come in the last couple of days … and they didn’t have cedar fever,” he said. They had colds or flu, he said.
From his experience, people with cedar fever are easy to detect. “Most cedar sufferers, you can look at them across the lobby and see their red swollen eyes” from rubbing them, Dyer said.
I’ve been feeling miserable since Monday, and so have some of my colleagues. Several were taken by surprise and wondered whether they had caught a cold over the Martin Luther King holiday. I told them if their runny noses also itched, they probably had the allergy. Cedar fever is noteworthy for its itch. Eyes itch, too, and become watery. Even ears can itch.
Dyer said some itching may occur with a cold, but with cedar fever, it’s much more pronounced. Hence, the red swollen eyes he sees at his office.
Prolonged drought has made this season less severe than usual, Cook said. But we’re likely facing another month of misery.
Cook advises patients to shower and wash their hair before bed. Also, staying indoors helps.
He and Dyer recommended over-the-counter cetirizine, marketed as Zyrtec. Some people get relief from salt water nasal washes, but others need steroid injections, Dyer said.
Dyer thinks I caught a cold.
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December 23, 2008
Cedar pollen: Something to sneeze at
Speaking of cedar fever, Doug Garner of Kyle shared a couple of photos that show why the allergen is such a problem for so many in Central Texas.
He said he went out to Lakeway on Saturday morning, tapped an Ashe Juniper with a fishing rod — just once — “and you can see the pollen just explode out of the tree.”
In the lower photo, Garner said, he saw the cedar trees “smoking from a distance with no help at all.”
With a warming trend on the horizon, the cedar pollen will only get worse. You can try and stay indoors or, if you’re feeling miserable, see an allergy specialist.
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December 22, 2008
'Tis the season -- for cedar fever
Presents? Check. Cold weather? Check. Cedar fever? Sorry!
Yes, we’re sorry to say, the annual scourge is back. The pollen count Sunday was 133 grains per cubic meter, which is low (under 500), according to KVUE forecasters.
KVUE reports pollen counts in the Statesman, and we had numbers for the first time in today’s paper. The station’s allergy site said the warm, sunny conditions Saturday caused pollen to show up during the last few days from the region’s Ashe Juniper trees, launching the season that so many Austinites dread.
Male mountain cedars feel especially amorous on sunny, windy days when clouds of pollen can be seen floating in the air. Needless to say, the happily mating trees make allergic Central Texans feel anything but romantic. They suffer with runny noses, scratchy throats, coughs and itchy eyes and ears. Luckily, fever isn’t part of the deal. But the misery sticks around through February.
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October 30, 2008
Counterintuitive research on food allergies suggests eating the troubling food
Back-to-back studies on food allergies are so counterintuitive they are noteworthy.
One study found that giving milk to children with milk allergies might alleviate their allergy over time, according to a release posted on Newswise, a listserv for journalists.
The other study, announced today by the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, says children who avoided peanuts during their early years were 10 times more likely to develop peanut allergies than kids who ate them. Researchers from King’s College London and Tel Aviv University studied 8,600 Jewish school-age children in the United Kingdom and Israel and compared their findings to infants and tots between the ages of 4 months and 2 years, according the journal.
The researchers estimated that the prevalence of peanut allergy in the United Kingdom was 1.85 percent compared with .17 percent in Israel.
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology said the findings were promising but called for more study. It did not recommend changing guidelines in countries that say peanuts should be avoided during pregnancy, breastfeeding and infancy: the UK, Australia and until recently, the United States.
The milk study by Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and Duke University was far too small to be conclusive: just 19 patients took part. But taken together, the two studies were interesting and certainly set the stage for more inquiry.
Food allergies are a problem for a lot of people. Last week, I wrote in this space that 3 million U.S. children under 18 have some sort of food allergy, based on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That represented nearly 4 percent of children in the country in 2007, up 18 percent from 1997 (2.3 million, or 3.3 percent of kids). No one knows whether it’s because of greater awareness, more meticulous reporting or some other reason.
While some food allergies are just a nuisance, they can be serious and even fatal if people aren’t careful.
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October 22, 2008
Food allergies in kids soar 18 percent in a decade, federal report says
How many of you have a kid or know one with a food allergy? I sure do.
Three million U.S. children under 18 have some sort of food allergy, according to a report released today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number represented nearly 4 percent of children in the country in 2007 and is up 18 percent from 1997 (2.3 million, or 3.3 percent of kids).
Someone with a food allergy can experience a reaction ranging from a tingling around the mouth and lips to anaphylactic shock and even death.
Also, “children with food allergy are two to four times as likely to experience other allergic conditions and asthma than children without food allergy,” the report says.
The report identifies eight foods that it says are responsible for more than 90 percent of allergic reactions: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat. Some children will “outgrow” the allergies, but others will have them for life.
Little is known about why these allergies occur.
So are more children allergic to food, or is there more awareness of food allergies and consequently, more children being identified each year?
“There certainly is greater awareness of the issue,” said Liliana Esposito, a spokeswoman for the Food Allergy Project, a nonprofit that advocates more research into food allergies. But she believes the increase in food allergies is real. “This increase is alarming,” she said.
So why is it happening?
“The simple answer is, no one knows for sure,” Esposito said. “The CDC report today confirms what childrens’ hospitals are seeing all over the country. The best theory, and it really is a theory, is that we’re cleaner. Children are not being exposed to something you and I were exposed to in the past. Their immune systems are not being exposed to what they were exposed to in the past. The environment, ironically, is cleaner.”
I called several food allergy researchers to discuss this, but they haven’t called back yet. If they have anything new to add, I’ll post an update.
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August 5, 2008
Global warming + ragweed = bad combo, group says
As an undisputed “Allergy Capital,” Austin almost always has some pesky pollen or allergen flying through the air and up sensitive noses.
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, citing studies in recent years, says there is ample evidence linking global warming to the problem. It is devoting the September issue of its journal, Allergy and Clinical Immunology, to exploring the topic.
Research studies going back to at least 2003 contend that rising temperatures and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are making allergies worse. The association says those factors already are causing ragweed seasons to last longer and producing more concentrated pollen counts. Ragweed season starts this month.
Aside from treating ragweed allergy with shots, the association recommends:
- Keeping windows closed and using the air conditioner to filter, cool and dry the air.
- Staying indoors, especially between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., when pollen counts are highest.
- Changing clothes after being outside.
- Showering before bed to wash pollen from the hair and face.
The association also says that some people feel worse when they eat bananas, cucumbers, melons and zucchini because the proteins in those foods are similar to the ones in ragweed.
The association will post daily ragweed pollen counts on its Web site during the season.
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