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The Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug to help people with food allergies in the event they are accidentally exposed. It’s called Xolair, and it’s been used to treat asthma for two decades. Now, it has a new use. News4JAX spoke to a local mom Monday who said her 9-year-old daughter, Catherine, ended up in the hospital last year after having an allergic reaction to a pecan on Thanksgiving. “It gave me hives. And um I think made me stop breathing for a little,” Catherine said. Catherine said it wasn’t scary for her. But it was for her...

The Bottom Line Kids eat bugs all the time. Few if any symptoms are likely to occur. In fact, insects form a regular part of the diet for many human cultures. Though most ingestions of edible insects tend to be harmless, people who have shellfish allergies should avoid eating insects due to the potential for cross-reactivity My child just ate a beetle." "I think I swallowed a stinkbug." "My kids were eating ants." Poison Control answers LOTS of calls about people who swallow insects of all kinds. Callers don't know whether to be worried, disgusted, or (sometimes) amused. If you're...

VIDEO AT LINK..... A pest management specialist from the University of Maine explains how to safely remove ticks. BY UNIVERSITY OF MAINE South Carolina meat lovers may want to do all they can to prevent bites from the lone star tick. It’s tick season in South Carolina until the end of September and while all these blood-sucking insects can potentially transmit different diseases, the lone star is known for causing alpha-gal syndrome — a type of food allergy to red meat. According to Clemson University Public Service and Agriculture, the lone star tick is the most collected species in South...

19 percent of the nationally representative group reported having a food allergy. But only 10.8 percent said they had symptoms consistent with an allergic reaction to food, such as hives, swelling of the lips or throat, and chest pain. The main culprits behind these allergies were shellfish, milk, and tree nuts. Those who didn’t have a convincing food allergy instead reported symptoms like stomach cramps, a stuffy nose, or nausea. The findings, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, roughly match up to estimates from other studies, including those that confirmed a person’s food allergy with testing or medical records. In...

The parent of a child with a life-threatening peanut allergy is fighting for new rules to protect airline passengers who have severe food allergies.Lianne Mandelbaum, who says she was practically kicked off a United Airlines flight last year because of her son’s condition, has been lobbying for new protections for allergy sufferers.Now, more than 14,000 people are coming to her aid, petitioning lawmakers and federal regulators to establish a "buffer zone" around passengers who are allergic to certain foods.“I am not after a nut ban,” Mandelbaum said. “Just the ability to preboard, wipe down the seat area and make an...

A new Maryland bill would let counties require each restaurant to have a staff member trained on food allergens, ready to advise customers. Is the measure needed? County governments may soon have authority to make restaurants accommodate customers with food allergies. A new bill would let counties require each restaurant to have a staff member trained on food allergens, ready to advise customers, reports WJLA TV. The bill would also require restaurants statewide to encourage customers to notify servers about their food allergies. The Senate passed the measure 33-14 Monday evening. A similar bill is pending in a House committee....

Remember the days, not that long ago, when you never encountered the word “gluten”? Unless you were an ambitious baker, it was a rare word, like threnody, or anchorite. No more. Gluten today is nearly up there with yoga and latte, and way more common than twerk. I know people who do not have celiac disease — if you are one of the 1 percent of Americans who suffer from celiac disease, letting gluten pass between your lips is not an option — who banished gluten from their diets just because, and so do you. They report feeling “so much...

A new preclinical study is raising hope of a potential cure for peanut and other food allergies, having found a way to turn off a body’s life-threatening allergic response to peanuts. The study by researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine achieved peanut tolerance by attaching peanut proteins onto blood cells and reintroducing them to the body — tricking the immune system into thinking the proteins pose no threat. The approach, previously used to target autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes, was used for the first time, successfully, to target allergic diseases, researchers said.

Metmom has had allergies and food allergies her entire life. In the last few years they have gotten steadily and progressively worse. Foods have been dropping out of her diet until she reached the point she is at now and can only eat rice, chicken, lamb, and venison. Anything else causes her to react rather destructively, debilitatingly. The problem is that the repeated continual exposure to the few remaining foods, could lead to a sensitivity to those as well, which has just happened to two foods she had been safely eating since October. There are options for nutrition should...

Many who think they have food allergies actually do not. A new report, commissioned by the federal government, finds the field is rife with poorly done studies, misdiagnoses and tests that can give misleading results. While there is no doubt that people can be allergic to certain foods, with reproducible responses ranging from a rash to a severe life-threatening reaction, the true incidence of food allergies is only about 8 percent for children and less than 5 percent for adults, said Dr. Marc Riedl, an author of the new paper and an allergist and immunologist at the University of California,...

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ROBYN O’BRIEN likes to joke that at least she hasn’t started checking the rearview mirror to see if she’s being followed. But some days, her imagination gets away from her and she wonders if it’s only a matter of time before Big Food tries to stop her from exposing what she sees as a profit-driven global conspiracy whose collateral damage is an alarming increase in childhood food allergies. Ms. O’Brien has presented her views, albeit in a less radical wrapper, on CNN, CBS and in frequent print interviews. Frontier Airlines and Wild Oats stores distribute the allergy-awareness gear she designed....

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- An agricultural researcher at North Carolina A&T State University has developed what he said is a simple process to make allergen-free peanuts. The inventor, Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna, is optimizing the process further to remove allergens from other foods. "We are extremely pleased that we were able to find such a simple solution to a vexing problem that has enormous economic and public health ramifications, both for peanut-sensitive individuals, and the food industry as a whole," Ahmedna said. Ahmedna is an associate professor of food science in N.C. A&T's School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. The new process...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp. faces at least three lawsuits claiming the fast-food giant misled the public after it acknowledged earlier this week its French fries contain milk and wheat ingredients, the Wall Street Journal Online reported on Sunday. The suits were filed by people with celiac disease, who have an intolerance to a protein found in wheat, the Journal said. McDonald's, based in Oak Brook, Illinois, had previously described the flavoring as safe for people with food allergies and other dietary sensitivities, the Journal said.

Thinking she was having an asthma attack, Christina Desforges burst into a friend's room and woke him in a desperate search for medicine. Friends called an ambulance as her breathing grew labored, but Desforges collapsed a moment after she stepped outside. She died four days later. It quickly became clear the 15-year-old girl succumbed to a peanut allergy _ not from nuts she ate, but a peanut-butter sandwich her boyfriend had consumed before kissing her that day. A friend of the couple said in a television interview that Desforges' boyfriend and other companions had no idea she was allergic to...

A Quebec teenager with a peanut allergy has died after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich hours earlier.

YORKTOWN, Ind. — Savannah Dowling is a typical 8-year-old girl; much of her protein comes from peanut butter sandwiches. However, if she wants to bring one to Central Indiana's Pleasant View Elementary School, she has to eat it at a special table in the cafeteria to accommodate one first grader with a severe allergy. Soon she'll have to take her lunch to an area the school is calling the "peanut gallery" so the one child with the peanut allergy isn't affected. "I don't think everybody should have to suffer because of one kid," said Mike Raper, a critic of the...

Oklahoma City-based Neighbors Coffee is recalling nearly 20,000 pounds of nut-flavored whole-bean coffee because it contains undeclared almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts and pecans. People with allergies can suffer serious and life-threatening reactions to the nuts. The recall covers eight-ounce, one-pound and five-pound bags of whole-bean, nut-flavored coffees produced from Feb. 12 through Aug. 12. Only five-pound bags bear lot numbers, located on the front and bottom center of the coffee packages. The recalled lot numbers are 0434 through 2254. The recalled coffee flavors are Almond Amaretto, Banana Nut Creme, Butter Pecan, Caramel Nut, Chocolate Hazelnut, Chocolate Pecan Fudge, Cinnamon Chocolate Almond,...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — A man who cooked and ate nearly 30 cicadas sought medical treatment after suffering a strong allergic reaction to the sautéed insects. The man showed up at a Bloomington clinic Thursday covered from head-to-toe in hives, and sheepishly told a doctor he'd caught and eaten the cicadas after sautéing them in butter with crushed garlic and basil. "He said they didn't taste too bad, but his wife didn't care for the aroma," said Dr. Al Ripani, the doctor who treated the man at Promptcare East. The man, who has a history of asthma and shellfish allergies,...

Boy, 12, Accused Of Threatening Allergic Teacher With Cookie POSTED: 4:05 pm EDT April 22, 2004 SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. -- A sixth-grader was suspended after school officials accused him of threatening to expose a highly allergic teacher to peanut butter cookies, the boy's father said Thursday. Loubert Gabriel said his son, 12-year-old Jules, had been kept out of class since April 2, after a girl in his social studies class at South Orange Middle School told the teacher that Jules had made the threat. The father said Jules was carrying a snack packet of Nutter Butter cookies and did make...