People with asthma are at greater risk of a potentially fatal allergic reaction to food, a conference was told at the weekend.
Dr Richard Pumphrey, of St Mary's Hospital in Manchester, told the meeting at the Trinity Medical Centre in St James's Hospital, Dublin, that those with severe allergy could carry adrenaline for self-injection because there might not be time to get to a doctor. This is the only medication which can reverse a severe allergic reaction.
Dr Pumphrey said that from studying severe allergic reactions over the past 10 years, the proper daily treatment of asthma using "preventer" inhalers would save as many lives as carrying adrenaline for self-injection.
Ms Emma Ball, lecturer in nutrition and dietetics at the Dublin Institute of Technology, distinguished between food intolerance and food allergy. Intolerance was a general term for all unpleasant adverse reactions while allergies were characterised by an abnormal immune system response to the food which in turn lead to disease.
Several speakers at the conference, organised by the Academy of Medical-Laboratory Science, emphasised the difficulties associated with diagnosing food allergies. "There is no wholly reliable test for food allergies; the best understanding of an allergy comes from listening carefully to what happened when the patient had a reaction," Dr Pumphrey said.