Eczema and dairy allergy

[talkhealth]

Catherine has asked us to post the following question to our experts:

Our daughter who is just over 12 months old has been diagnosed with moderate to severe excema. Her excema first started around 8 weeks and got progressively worse (she also caught the cold sore virus and was treated in hospital with anti virals). She was breastfeed until she was 7 months old. We found out she had an allergy to diary and is currently on Wysoy powder. The allergy presented itself through further rashes/excema, running nose and streaming eyes with just a drop of the milk. I have heard the protein in Wysoy is very similar to the diary formula, however, my daughter does not react to wysoy as agreesively to diary but could the wysoy be making her excema worse? We have been prescribed hydrolysed formula but she does not take to it at all.

Q1. Do you think I should persist with hydrolysed to ensure she is not allergic to wysoy?

Q2. We have been described a night sedative Ucerax, however, we have found this makes our daughter hyperactive rather than drowsy. Are there any other night sedatives that could help her with the itch so she can get some sleep.

We have also found out my daughter is allergic to nuts by giving her a dose of vitamin drops that contained peanut oil she wheezed quite badly and did not respond to piriton. The A&E department said that we need a care plan in place and await to hear from the allergy centre. We are awaiting an appointment.

Q3. What care plan should I have in place if my daughter reacts to something. At present we give her 2.5ml of piriton and then go to out of hours doctors – Is this right? Should I push to receive an epipen from the allergy centre?

Q4. What other food could my daughter be possibly allergic to. For example I have read that she could be allergic to some pulses/Lentils as this is a similar protein? I do not want to exclude anything from her diet but I do want to be prepared and know if there are certain foods she could be allergic to.

Q5. Which Allergy Testing would you recommend and why? I do not suffer from any allergies or excema but my husband has mild hayfever but no food allergies or excema.

Q6. I understand there is new research about exposing children with allergies in a medically controlled environment can help with the reduction in the allergic reactions. Are these trails happening within the NHS?

Thank you for taking the time to be involved in this online forum.

Catherine

[Dr Adam Fox]

Hello Catherine

Q1. A significant proportion of milk allergic children are soy allergic so a trial of going soy free would be worthwhile.At 12 moths she is unlikely to take a hydrolysed formula but you could try calcium fortified oat milk but this should really be alongside the dietetic advice you would get at the allergy clinic.

Q2. You could try prition but double check you are giving her enough of the eucerax.

Q3. If the reaction was an anaphylaxis ie involved wheezing then you should have been given an emergency plan including adrenaline injectors (such as epipen, anapen or jext) and trained how to use it before you left hospital. If you weren’t you should ask your GP as recently published NICE guidelines are very clear on this.

Q4. Most likely are egg and sesame but you should have a pretty thorough creen at the clinic

Q5. Skin testing or blood test are equally useful

Q6. Yes – the UK study (called the STOP study) is running at Addenbrookes in Cambridge but they have all the recruits they need already. We will all be awaiting the results of the study.