A latest study reveals the rate of hospital admissions in the UK due to a serious allergic reaction caused by food has tripled over a 20 year period. The research published in the journal BMJ, described time trends for hospital admissions due to food anaphylaxis in the United Kingdom. Researchers from Imperial College London's National Heart & Lung Institute studied data between 1998 and 2018, measuring time trends, age, and sex distributions for anaphylaxis admissions due to food and non-food triggers, and then compared these with reported fatalities.
Some 101,891 people were admitted to the hospital for anaphylaxis between 1998 and 2018. Out of this 30,700 of these admissions were coded as due to a food trigger. Food anaphylaxis admissions increased from 1.23 to 4.04 per 100,000 population per year, an annual increase of 5.7 per cent. The largest increase in hospital admissions were seen in children younger than 15 years.
A total of 152 deaths were identified over the 20-year period, where the fatal event was probably caused by food-induced anaphylaxis. The case fatality rate decreased from 0.7 per cent to 0.19 per cent for confirmed fatal food anaphylaxis and to 0.3 per cent for suspected fatal food anaphylaxis. The researchers said that improvements in the recognition and management of anaphylaxis could partly explain the decrease in the case fatality rate despite increasing hospital admissions for anaphylaxis.
The authors conclude, “Cow's milk is increasingly identified as the culprit allergen for fatal food reactions, and is now the commonest cause of fatal anaphylaxis in children. More education is needed to highlight the specific risks posed by cow's milk to people who are allergic to increase awareness among food businesses.”
“Further work is needed to assess the evidence for an age-related vulnerability to severe anaphylaxis in young adults, therefore improving our ability to risk-stratify patients with food allergies and to reduce the risk of fatal outcomes.”
