Criteria for food challenges

[penelope]

Have any of you (or your kids) done a food challenge with blood work result being greater than 2?

Almond challenge for my kid is tomorrow.  I'm a wreck!

[penelope]

Have any of you done a food challenge to almonds?
Anyone done a food challenge for almonds with a blood test result higher than 3?

[Lisa]

Not to almond, but we did one to Sesame with a blood test of 8.58.  Strong positive, but absolutely no history of reaction.....It got tested by accident, lab did more than they were supposed to, but once they opened that can of worms, we needed to see it through to the end.  My son ended up not being allergic, but it was scary thinking he would be to sesame which is not required to be labeled for.

[CMdeux]

We've had the same experience with sesame-- RAST was apparently a false positive, but we avoided for several years until we could look into it further.  I know that the RAST score was over 4.  Please note, though, that this is a child with MFA whose other known allergens elicited RAST values near 100 and over it, respectively.

We've also challenged hazelnut, which we have seen a positive RAST and SPT for (the IgE value was pretty low, though-- like 2-3 I think, which is "low" for my DD relative to her known anaphylaxis triggers).

However-- almond was in that same range, and unfortunately we've seen pretty serious reactions to cross-contamination from shared lines.  So I'm not sure that the numbers on tests say as much as a lack of rxn history does. 

[maeve]

We too had a false positive RAST and SPT to sesame and avoided it for a couple of years.  DD passed a sesame food challenge with flying colors.  I should note that DD's RAST score for sesame was lower than the OP's child's score.

[rebekahc]

Hi penelope,

Hopefully you're at the challenge and it's going well!  I'm sorry I didn't see your post before now.

To answer your question, I think much depends on your child's total IgE, reaction history and other allergies.  I also know that the RAST values which indicate likely-hood of a reaction change for different allergens, but I'm not sure what that number is for almonds.

Sorry I couldn't be more help!

Rebekah

P.S.  I'm moving this topic to the main board so more people will see it.  Oops, I didn't realize there were two identical topics started - I will merge them and leave just one topic in Main.

[AllergyMum]

Hope your challenge went safely for your child.  Please let us know how it went.

All the in-office challenges for my son have been to negative RAST & skin.  His reaction history to egg has clearly show us the need for epi and the egg RAST was lower than 3 then

[Mfamom]

I hope you let us know how the challenge went! 

[penelope]

We had the almond food challenge today.  Blood work number is 4 but no history of reaction to almond.
Skin prick test was negative.  After 4 hours and 8 almonds he passed!

Still to go egg, hazelnut, mango and macadamia nut

[CMdeux]

Hurray!!!   

That is fantastic news, Penelope-- thank you so much for sharing how it went.