Association of food allergy with asthma severity and atopic diseases in Jewish and Arab adolescents
Acta Pediatrica, 07/05/2012

Graif Y et al. – The prevalence of allergy to specific foods differs between Jews and Arabs. Asthmatic adolescents with food allergy report more severe asthma than those without food allergy.

• The self–report questionnaire of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood was administered to adolescents aged 13–14 years from randomly selected junior high schools in Israel.
• Questions regarding food allergy were added.

• A total of 11,171 questionnaires were available for analysis.
• Food allergy was reported by 3.6% of participants: 1.9% milk, 0.6% egg, 0.6% peanut, 0.4% sesame.
• On multivariate analysis, food allergy was strongly associated with current asthma (OR 2.5, 95% CI 1.8–3.3), atopic eczema (OR 3.2, 95% CI 2.4–4.3), and allergic rhinitis (OR 2.4, 95% CI 1.8–3.1); Arabs were significantly more allergic to peanut (OR 2.5, 95% CI 1.5–4.1), egg (OR 3.5, 95%CI 2.1–5.9), and sesame (OR 2.3, 95% CI 1.2–4.5) than Jews, and less allergic to milk (OR 0.6, 95% CI 0.4–0.9).
• Asthmatic subjects with food allergy had significantly more parameters of severe asthma than those without food allergy (p<0.001).