This is my husband's biggest concern about the possibility of me doing a food challenge - that I will pass the IOFC and then have a reaction at home when reintroducing the food, or developing the allergy again, especially since my allergies don't appear on tests. I read through some of the articles linked in here and had some questions:
- In the experience of members here, would an allergist increase the final dose of an IOFC if a patient requested it? To make the final dose, or total combined amount allergen eaten in the challenge, close to what might be considered a normal dose for an average person. Or, should that already be best practice? (My challenge would be for potato, which could be a very large 'normal' dose when considering eating a whole jacket potato as a dinner, for example.)
- How long did it take people here to redevelop their allergy once they passed an IOFC? Is the timeframe fairly consistent, or is it all over the place? (Just curious if there's a point where one could successfully declare the risk of redevelopment unlikely.)
I'm trying to be as level-headed about this as I can, without freaking out too much (online, anyway). I tried looking for a thread on IOFC questions alone but couldn't find one.