Food allergy, dermatologic diseases, and anaphylaxisParental use of EpiPen for children with food allergies
Section snippets
Study participants
Parents of children with food allergy were recruited through mailings to members of a local suburban food-allergy support group and to patients of a private pediatric allergist's practice. Inclusion criteria required physician-diagnosed food allergy, and all patients must have been prescribed EpiPen for home use. Participants were limited to parents, and children were not surveyed. Survey data were limited to one child per parent; if surveys had been completed for multiple children from the
Results
Surveys were returned by 170 families. Three surveys were returned without signed consent forms, and 2 subjects had food allergy but had not been prescribed EpiPen. These surveys were not included in the data analysis. Hence 165 completed surveys with signed consent were included in the study, for a response rate of 46% (165/360).
The vast majority of respondents were married white mothers who held college or graduate degrees (Table II). The only minority represented were Asians, who made up 5%
Discussion
Self-injectable epinephrine, currently available in the form of EpiPen and EpiPen Jr in the United States, is a critical element of the treatment plan for IgE-mediated food allergies. There are an estimated 150 deaths per year in the United States attributed to anaphylaxis caused by food allergy.3 The median time to respiratory or cardiac arrest was found by one study12 to be 30 minutes for food anaphylaxis. Bock et al3 reported on 32 fatalities, but it could be confirmed that epinephrine was
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Supported by the Division of Allergy, Children's Memorial Hospital.
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: All authors—none disclosed.