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. 2015 Feb 25:5:8.
doi: 10.1186/s13601-015-0051-1. eCollection 2015.

Food allergy in the Netherlands: differences in clinical severity, causative foods, sensitization and DBPCFC between community and outpatients

Thuy-My Le  1 , Els van Hoffen  2 , Ischa Kummeling  3 , James Potts  4 , Barbara K Ballmer-Weber  5 , Carla Afm Bruijnzeel-Koomen  1 , Ans Fm Lebens  1 , Jonas Lidholm  6 , Titia M Lindner  1 , Alan Mackie  7 , En Clare Mills  8 , Ronald van Ree  9 , Stefan Vieths  10 , Montserrat Fernández-Rivas  11 , Peter G Burney  4 , André C Knulst  1
Affiliations

Food allergy in the Netherlands: differences in clinical severity, causative foods, sensitization and DBPCFC between community and outpatients

Thuy-My Le et al. Clin Transl Allergy. .

Abstract

Background: It is unknown whether food allergy (FA) in an unselected population is comparable to those from an outpatient clinic population.

Objective: To discover if FA in a random sample from the Dutch community is comparable to that of outpatients.

Methods: This study was part of the Europrevall-project. A random sample of 6600 adults received a questionnaire. Those with symptoms to one of 24 defined priority foods were tested for sIgE. Participants with a positive case history and elevated sIgE were evaluated by double-blind placebo-controlled food challenge (DBPCFC). Outpatients with a suspicion of FA were evaluated by questionnaire, sIgE and DBPCFC.

Results: In the community, severe symptoms were reported less often than in outpatients (39.3% vs. 54.3%). Participants in the community were less commonly sensitized to any of the foods. When selecting only those with a probable FA (i.e. symptoms of priority food and elevation of sIgE to the respective food), no major differences were observed with respect to severity, causative foods, sensitization and DBPCFC between the groups.

Conclusion: In the Netherlands, there are large differences in self-reported FA between community and outpatients. However, Dutch community and outpatients with a probable FA do not differ with respect to severity, causative foods, sensitization and DBPCFC-outcome.

Keywords: Adults; Community; DBPCFC; Food allergy; sIgE.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow-diagram of the epidemiological part of the study in the community.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Percentage of positive sIgE in the community and outpatients with symptoms to the food in the 2nd stage (reported symptoms) and 3rd stage (reported symptoms and positive sIgE for at least 1 food) of the study. The number (n = ..) between brackets indicates the total number of the community and outpatients that reported symptoms to that respective priority food. *p-value <0.05.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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