Private MD News

Food allergies are most common in urban youths

Category: Allergy Testing

Parents living in urban areas may want to consider seeking blood testing to have their children checked for food allergies. New evidence suggests that city-dwelling youths are more likely to have food allergies than their rural counterparts.

In particular, the study, which was published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics, indicated that children living in cities have twice the rates of peanut and shellfish allergies.

For the study, researchers from Northwestern University surveyed the families of nearly 40,000 children. The results showed that 9.8 percent of children living in cities had food allergies, while just 6.2 percent of children in rural areas had allergies. However, the severity of allergies did not differ between the two settings.

Mary Jane Marchisotto, the executive director of the Food Allergy Initiative, said the findings could help future researchers direct their studies into causes of allergies. This could speed the development of new treatments to fight the problem.

The results could also help determine which children could benefit most from blood testing to check for the presence of food allergies.