Dr. Fenton: Hello. My name is Dr. Matthew Fenton. I'm Chief of the Asthma, Allergy, and Inflammation Branch at NIAID. I led the Institute's effort to create clinical guidelines for the diagnosis and management of food allergy.
Here with me today is my colleague Dr. Hugh Sampson, Professor of Pediatrics and Dean for Translational Biomedical Sciences at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City where he serves as the Director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute. Dr. Sampson is past president of AAAAI. Dr. Sampson made the food allergy guidelines one of his presidential initiatives, and he chaired an expert panel writing group and served on the guidelines coordinating committee.
The food allergy guidelines were released in December 2010; with their release how should they now guide clinical practice? That's the topic we're going to discuss today for Medscape Allergy & Clinical Immunology.
Although the exact prevalence of food allergy in the United States is not known, it's estimated that 10-12 million Americans are affected. A number of different diseases with similar symptoms are shared with food allergy, so there is a real potential for overdiagnosis of food allergy. Current increases in the prevalence of food allergy match the increases in prevalence that we see with other allergic diseases such as asthma. Hugh?
