Calculator to predict child food allergies
Friday March 4th, 2011
Irish researchers have developed an online calculator that can predict three food allergies in children within seconds.
The new “Cork-Southampton calculator” has a 96 per cent accuracy rate compared with existing methods that are between 61 per cent and 81 per cent accurate.
Dr
Audrey DunnGalvin and Professor Jonathan Hourihane of the Department of
Paediatrics and Child Health, University College Cork, devised calculations
for cow’s milk, egg and peanut.
They say the mathematical model comprised known or suspected predictors that greatly increased the accuracy of the final model.
They looked at the outcomes of combinations of data on clinical factors and compared those to the results of the children’s food challenges.
From this analysis, they developed an effective prediction model that was a more accurate predictor than individual allergy tests. Their research is published online in the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology.
“Young children can find the normal food allergy tests quite stressful and this test will take a lot of the distress out of the process, even just by delaying a challenge until the odds of passing it improve over time, which is the norm,” says Dr DunnGalvin.
“It has also implications for oral immunotherapy where clinicians try to desensitise children to their allergies by giving them controlled doses of the food to which they are allergic.”
Kevin Dalton, of UCC’s Office of Technology Transfer, said he hoped to make the product commercially available this year.
“Conventional food allergy tests are less than perfect but the UCC patented diagnostic is very reliable and should replace uncertainty with certainty for many doctors treating children with food allergy,” he said.
“We foresee a commercial product being launched this year resulting in better patient care and substantial savings for the healthcare service.”
Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology on-line March 3 2011
Tags: Allergies & Asthma | Child Health | Diet & Food | Europe
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