Journal of Nutrition & Food Sciences
Open Access
ISSN: 2155-9600
+32 25889658
ISSN: 2155-9600
+32 25889658
Priyanka Jain
National Institute of Nutrition, India
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Nutr Food Sci
To determine the extent to which perceived adverse food reactions in asthmatics were associated with IgE mediated food allergy, as defined by skin prick testing (SPT). Patients suffering from asthma underwent SPT to 13 common food allergens (banana, curd, rice, lemon, milk, orange, egg, curd, pea groundnut, fish, radish, potato) and were asked whether they had ever suffered any food illness/ trouble and if so to list such foods. A positive SPT was defined as wheal diameter of �3 mm. Cohen�s kappa (k) was used to assess the agreement between SPT and self-reported reactions to foods which contained the allergen of interest. The patients were enrolled as they came on accrual basis from Aug 2009 to Sep 2010 and recruited from the outpatient department of the Department of Pulmonary Medicine, King George�s Medical University, Lucknow. The subjects were 200 adults aged 15-40 years. Out of 200 patients 143 (71.5%) reported illness to foods nearly always. However, only 17 subjects who reported illness to a food also had a positive SPT to the same food. The prevalence of adverse food reactions associated with IgE mediated allergy in the adult general population would be less than 11.8% (17/143). The agreement between SPT and self-reported illness to foods was good for groundnut (k=0.92), fish (0.10) and potato and moderate for egg (k=0.50) and green pea (k=0.53) and no agreement for banana (k=0.14), curd (k=0.06), rice (k=0.21), lemon (k=0.19), milk (k=0.06), orange (k=0.11) and radish (k=0.31). There was little agreement between self-reported perceived illness to foods known to contain the food allergen of interest and positive SPT, suggesting that most reactions are not due to IgE mediated food allergy.