|  | Conditions Treatments | Allergies

Egg Allergy Cures

Egg is one of the top eight food allergens identified in the United States. Both whites and yolks may cause immune reactions, although many egg-allergic children outgrow their allergy. To tolerate your egg allergy, practice careful avoidance and, if possible, desensitization techniques.

  1. Avoidance Methods

    • Egg allergy can manifest as skin reactions (such as itchy hives and rashes), as nausea and vomiting, or as severe breathing problems, such as wheezing or anaphylaxis. Severely allergic individuals may react to egg as an ingredient or even when products that have been near an area where an egg cooks. Simply put, if you have an egg allergy, practice strict avoidance of eggs and egg products, as well as a list of related ingredients that contain egg protein, such as albumin, globulin, lecithin and lysozyme. Although a true cure does not exist, staying away from egg products often leads to tolerance of the allergen. According to the Mayo Clinic, the majority of children with egg allergy will outgrow the allergy by age five.

    Desensitization Methods

    • Practice desensitization---the administration of minute, tolerated, amounts of allergenic egg protein with continued administration of increasing amounts. If your allergy will allow it, expose yourself to small amounts of egg or egg products over time, which may induce tolerance of normal amounts of egg in a diet. Do not inject egg protein, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology warns. Greek researchers in the August 2008 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reported successful egg tolerance in 90 percent of nearly 100 children given increasing amounts of cake. In the United States, Buchanan et al in the Journal of Allergy and Clinincal Immunology in 2007 reported similar success of increasing oral doses of egg, and in the United States the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases has a trial of oral egg ingestion among allergic children under way as well.

    Warning

    • Do not give egg to a person with an egg allergy without the help of a doctor.

Allergies - Related Articles