Tweet, tweet....

I have been following some twitter accounts today of people who are at the big AAAAI conference this week.  Very cool!  https://twitter.com/#!/allergistmommy has done a great job of sharing information all day long about all the different research etc.  Here is what I learned from her tweets today:

1.  USE THE EPIPEN!!!!  This mirrors what our allergist told us...EPI is first line of defense for food allergy, not Benadryl!  Also, this just makes me angrier at our local ER where I took my son during his reaction- they never even offered the Epi because it wasn't "classic symptoms".  Well, the new research throws that out the window and if it should ever happen again, I will know what to insist that they do for him!

2.  There are new guidelines going out to all doctors and ERs to hopefully update them on what the research is showing and how to treat a reaction.  Again, USE THE EPIPEN people! 

3.  Oral immunotherapy seems to work a little better than Sublingual immunotherapy, but there are more side effects from oral therapy.  In my brain, this means that perhaps kids/adults who can't tolerate oral therapy, maybe sublingual is still an option for them that will help them achieve some level of desensitization without the side effects.  For the rest of the folks though, the side effects seem minor and the oral IT is doing the job.  Not a cure really, but it sure does beat doing nothing!

4.  Some really cool research is coming out about testing people for allergies and being more accurate and more predictive.  That is part of the issue now...lots of people test positive for an allergy, but might be able to actually tolerate the food or whatever.  So, they are doing work on what they should be looking for in tests, etc.

5.  Some cool news for egg and milk allergy folks...looks like a lot of kids can actually tolerate baked egg and baked milk and that putting that into the diet of those kids is like a form of IT and the kids seem to be "growing out" of their allergies more on this diet.  (Now, don't try that at home folks...this is all clinical setting and monitored of course!)  Also, though, there are some folks that are highly allergic to all forms and have to avoid completely.  But, exciting news for a lot of people and hopefully this will get those kids doing a lesser form of IT and then when the real treatment is approved, those other kids who are more severe will hopefully benefit from that.

6.  They are researching everything that they can get their hands on!  The Chinese Herbal mixture seems to be showing some promising results at stopping anaphylaxis.....maybe even using this in combination with OIT or something could be an option in the future to help folks not have a bad reaction, etc.

Hoping to learn more as the week goes on!  If you want to see more, look for #AAAAI on twitter.