Food Allergies and Vaccines

Sepideh Miller
Jul 22, 2017 · 2 min read

Today, we had our annual SAFE picnic. This year, there were a couple of new children with so many food allergies. I live in a place where people have a lot of questions about vaccines, and some things have changed drastically over the past fifteen or so years. A lot of the monovalent vaccines, vaccines for individual diseases, are no longer available. The recommendation for how children with egg allergies should take the flu vaccine has also changed.

In the past, people could choose to give a vaccine for mumps, measles, and rubella separately. However, that is no longer an option since Merck no longer makes the monovalent vaccines. The MMR contains egg protein, and doctors in the UK are recommending that those vaccines be administered in a pediatrician’s office to allergic patients as opposed to in a hospital setting.

There are precautions that allergists can take with some of the vaccines; but for the most part, they are not necessary. Here is a case where someone is asking about whether a child with an egg allergy and a genetic condition who shows a reaction to the MMR scratch test should receive the MMR vaccine. I thought it was interesting that MMR desensitization was an option being considered for this child.

The amount of egg in the flu vaccine is now so low that egg-allergic people can take the flu vaccine without needing to get a scratch test first or being supervised by their allergist. Getting the flu vaccine is especially important for people who have asthma.

Here is a link to the abstract of a paper that discusses vaccine allergies.

Here is a link to an article on vaccine hesitancy and skepticism.

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Sepideh Miller

Written by

Allergic mom, raising an allergic child

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