My one year old son was just diagnosed with an allergy to beef pork and milk does anyone know where I can get anymore information on this??
My 2 year old daughter has shown allergy to beef (immunocap 0.75), milk, meggs and peanut. Recently I was told that bison meat may not have the same potential for allergenicity as cow beef. Is there cross-reactivity? What is the percentage of children that will outgrow a beef allergy?
To help respond to your question, I obtained input from dr. Stephen Taylor of the Univ of Nebraska, a leading expert in food allergy. His response is enclosed below. I have also enclosed abstracts of relevant reports by Dr. Sampson’s group and the Italian investigator to whom I think Dr. Taylor referred. I should mention that a 0.75 kU/L level of IgE antibodies is not very impressive but could still be associated with clinical sensitivity to a food. Therefore, I would recommend that any clinical oral challenge trial being considered should be carried out cautiously using graded amounts (starting with very small amounts of well cooked meat) under close medical observation in a facility equipped to treat acute allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis .
Dr Taylor’s comments:
We searched through our extensive database of food allergy literature and found no reference whatsoever to bison/buffalo meat allergy. However, I would definitely hesitate to conclude that bison is not allergenic. One of my famous sayings: Absence of evidence does not necessarily equal evidence of absence.
I would note that the allergies to beef, pork and chicken are related to bovine serum albumin, porcine serum albumin, and chicken serum albumin respectively. Hugh Sampson and also a group in have studied beef allergy and observed that beef-allergic patients tend to react to less well cooked (rare) beef. Apparently the allergenicity of BSA is heat-labile as well done beef tends to be tolerated.
Since there is some similarity between serum albumins from various species
in terms of sequence homology, I would be very careful about feeding
undercooked bison to this child also.
I am not so reliant on the specific beef IgE level because I am not sure how good the CAP might be for this food. I can believe that Pharmacia has few positive sera to evaluate in this case so reliability is more questionable.
You might ask this fellow to read the papers on beef allergy by Sampson (am traveling and cannot remember the name of the key Italian investigator). Maybe his daughter can tolerate well cooked beef but I would not wish to advocate this unless he is comfortable with it. I am always reluctant to encourage trying such strategies at home but perhaps this fellow has the capability to do so with more confidence but I would want it to be his decision for sure.
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Nutrition. 2000 Jun;16(6):454-7. Related Articles, Links
Beef allergy in children. Fiocchi A, Restani P, Riva E. Department of Pediatrics, San Paolo Biomedical Institute, University of Milan Medical School, Milan, Italy.
Beef allergy was poorly known before the ’90s. Since then, a number of papers appeared elucidating the nature, epidemiology, and symptoms of beef allergy in children allergic to cow’s milk and children suffering from atopic dermatitis. It is now clear that beef allergy is not an infrequent occurrence, with an incidence between 3. 28% and 6.52% among children with atopic dermatitis, its incidence may be as much as 0.3% in the general population. A diagnosis of beef allergy must be supported by skin prick tests, RASTs, and challenges. The specificity and sensitivity according to type of test and the type of extract, however, remains to be evaluated. Despite the fact that other allergens can be sensitizing, the major beef allergen is bovine serum albumin (BSA). Beef-sensitive children are also sensitized to ovine serum albumin, as well as to other serum albumins; therefore, the use of alternative meats in beef-allergic children must be carefully evaluated on an individual basis. Because industrial heat processing is more efficient than domestic cooking in reducing reactivity in beef-sensitive children, freeze-drying and homogenization may support the introduction of processed beef into the diet of beef-allergic children.
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J Allergy Clin Immunol. 1997 Mar;99(3):293-300. Related Articles, Links
Clinical reactivity to beef in children allergic to cow’s milk.
Werfel SJ, Cooke SK, Sampson HA. Department of Pediatrics, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21287, .
BACKGROUND: Cow’s milk is one of the most common food allergens in children.
Limited information is available on the prevalence of reactivity to a related food source, beef. The purposes of this study were to examine the prevalence of symptomatic sensitivity to beef in a selected pediatric population and to determine the frequency of concomitant reactivity to cow’s milk and beef.
METHODS: Children referred for assessment of atopic dermatitis and possible food hypersensitivity were evaluated for symptomatic reactivity to beef by double-blind placebo-controlled food challenges (DBPCFCs) and subsequent open feedings of beef. Sodium dodecyl-sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), immunoblot, and immunodot blot analyses were performed with patients’ sera on preparations of beef extracts subjected to different cooking conditions: raw (no heating), medium, and well-cooked.
RESULTS: Eleven of 335 children referred for evaluation of atopic dermatitis and possible food hypersensitivity were found to have symptomatic sensitivity to beef; eight were also sensitive to milk, as demonstrated in previous DBPCFCs. Eight patients reacted to beef during DBPCFC, and three tolerated beef in a DBPCFC and well-cooked beef in an open challenge but reacted to ingestion of less well-cooked beef. SDS-PAGE of raw beef revealed at least 24 protein fractions. Several protein bands in raw beef appeared to denature with heating. Bovine serum albumin and bovine gamma globulin were heat-labile in the beef extract, but six protein fractions persisted even after heating the beef extract for 2 hours at 85 degrees C. IgE from patients reacting to rare and well-cooked beef bound up to six of these heat-resistant fractions, but IgE from patients
reacting only to rare beef failed to bind any of these fractions with one exception. In addition, patients reacting to rare and well-cooked beef had specific IgE to a 17.8 kd fraction, which was only weakly recognized by one patient reacting only to rare beef. CONCLUSIONS: Specific IgE antibodies to heat-labile beef proteins might explain why some patients can tolerate well-cooked beef but not medium-rare and rare beef. Patients reacting only to rare beef may not need to maintain a complete beef elimination diet.
