Many parents of kids with severe food allergies worry about the dangers their kids face when they are out on their own, but a new study suggests parents should be just as worried about what could happen while their kids are being supervised.
The study by Montreal researchers found that at least a third of childhood severe food allergy reactions occur in kids who are under adult supervision. And, in most cases, those adults are not the child’s parents.
Scientists from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre collected data from four Canadian emergency departments between December 2012 and April 2015, looking for incidents of pediatric anaphylaxis -- severe allergic reactions in kids that required medical attention.
They found that, in 31.5 per cent of the incidents, the children had been under the supervision of adults. Another 20 per cent involved kids who were unsupervised; in the last 50 per cent of cases, it was not known if the children had been supervised.
In those incidents involving supervised children, the supervising adult was not the child’s parent in 65 per cent of the cases.
The study’s lead investigator, Dr. Moshe Ben-Shoshan, who’s a pediatric allergist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital of the MUHC, says the study also found that the majority of allergic reactions occurred at home.
He told CTV Montreal even he did not expect to see that in so many of the incidents, the children were being supervised.
“It was a little bit surprising because I think that we have that false sense of security that as long as we are at home under adult supervision, with an adult that we know, we'll be fine. Apparently, that's not the case,” he said.
The study also looked at the role food labelling played in the accidental allergic reactions. They found that one third of the incidents were attributed to a food labels issue.
“But when we asked specifically what were the issues, apparently it's not because the food labels were not clear. The majority of reactions were because we don't read the food labels,” Dr. Ben-Shoshan said.
He said the fact that food labels are being ignored suggested supervising adults are not being properly instructed on the need for vigilance.
“That tells me that we need to have better education programs for anyone who cares for children with a suspected food allergy,” he said.
For example, it’s important to avoid all products with labels that say they “may contain” an allergen, because even traces of certain allergens can cause potentially fatal allergic reactions.
The researchers used incident reports that are part of the Cross-Canada Anaphylaxis REgistry (C-CARE), which is an anaphylaxis study assessing the rate, triggers and management of anaphylaxis in different provinces across Canada.
The full findings are published in the journal Pediatric Allergy and Immunology.
With a report from CTV’s Montreal’s Cindy Sherwin
