I don’t know about you, but my allergies have really been acting up lately. Well, maybe not this week since it’s been cooler. But last week my eyes were watering, my nose was running, and my lungs were wheezing (kind of). But for the first two weeks of August, a lot of my patients were complaining about their allergy symptoms getting worse. And for some people, their asthma was getting worse as well.
The local TV station called me last week during the beginning of ragweed pollen season and asked me to talk about it:
Happy: Ma’am, I noticed you have an allergy to prednisone listed. Ma’am: Oh, I can never take prednisone again. I’m allergic to it. Happy: Really? Huh. What happened when you took prednisone? Ma’am: It made my tongue swell up really bad. Happy: Huh. What did they give you to reverse the allergic reaction? Ma’am: Some sort of steroid through my IV.
Current methods of testing people for food allergies aren’t particularly precise, leaving many people to falsely think that they have a condition that they really don’t.
MIT chemical engineer Christopher Love is working on a new test based on cytokines that may prove to be substantially faster and more reliable. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
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Current methods of testing people for food allergies aren’t particularly precise, leaving many people to falsely think that they have a condition that they really don’t.
