Tag: allergy testing

What is Triggering Your Child’s Hives?

Learn how to treat your child’s hives, which could have been triggered by a food, drug, or recent viral infection.

Has your child ever had hives?

What was the first thing you thought of?

If you’re like most parents, it is likely what your child had recently eaten, thinking that is most likely to be what is causing their allergic reaction.

Hives can be scary, because they can appear suddenly all over your child's body. They are one of those things that typically looks worse than it is though.
Hives can be scary, because they can appear suddenly all over your child’s body. They are one of those things that typically looks worse than it is though. Photo by Sussman et al (CC BY 4.0)

It is important to remember that there are many more things in addition to food allergies that can cause hives in kids though. These include medications, infections, exposure to the sun, and for some kids, even physically stroking their skin, which is called dermographism.

What are Hives?

A hive on your child's lip is much different from swelling inside their mouth and throat.
A hive on your child’s lip is much different from swelling inside their mouth and throat. Photo by Sussman et al (CC BY 4.0)

Hives are a type of allergic or immune system reaction that occurs when something triggers the release of chemicals, including histamine, from cells in a child’s body.

Hives are usually harmless if they are the only symptom your child is having.

Unfortunately, children with hives and more severe symptoms, such as wheezing, difficulty breathing or swallowing, or swelling in their mouth or throat, may have anaphylaxis – a life-threatening allergic reaction. These children need immediate medical attention.

Symptoms of Hives

In addition to their typical appearance as red or pink raised areas on your child’s skin, hives are usually:

  • itchy
  • seen alone or are in groups
  • varied in size, with some being smaller than your child’s finger tip and other’s larger than a half-dollar size. Also, hives can often merge or join to form even larger hives that, for example, can cover half of your child’s abdomen.
  • temporary and come and go over several hours. They often don’t go away completely though. Instead, old hives go away in one part of your child’s body, while new ones continue to appear somewhere else. Any individual hive shouldn’t last more than 24 hours. If it does, then your child may have a similar skin rash, such as erythema multiforme, and not simple hives.

Less commonly, hives can sting, be painful, and can leave bruises on your child’s skin.

Kids with hives may have additional symptoms depending on what is triggering the hives. For example, if a viral infection is causing the hives, then they may have a sore throat, runny nose, and/or cough.

What is Triggering Your Child’s Hives?

Although some things, such as certain foods, commonly cause hives, keep in mind that almost anything can trigger hives.

Common causes of hives can include:

  • foods, especially peanuts, eggs, tree nuts, milk, shellfish, wheat, and soy
  • medications, especially antibiotics like penicillin and sulfa drugs
  • additives in foods or medications, such as the food dye tartrazine (Yellow No. 5)
  • infections, especially viral infections
  • insect bites and stings
  • latex
  • exercise
  • stress
  • exposure to heat, cold, or water, no matter what the temperature is
  • dermatographism, a physical urticaria, in which hives are triggered by stroking the skin, such as by scratching

How do you figure out what is causing your child’s hives?

It can be hard.

To help figure it out, keep a diary of all of your child’s medications and everything he recently eat or drank, shortly before breaking out.

Allergy testing is sometimes necessary to figure out what is causing hives, especially if your child’s hives are not going away or they keep getting hives over and over. Fortunately, most kids don’t need testing for their hives, and unless the trigger is obvious, like when it follows eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or they are on Amoxil for an ear infection, there is a good chance that they won’t get hives again.

Treatments for Hives

Since hives are caused by the chemical histamine, it makes sense that you would treat them with an antihistamine medication, such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl). Other sedating antihistamines that are sometimes used to treat hives include hydroxyzine (Atarax) and cyproheptadine (Periactin).

Non-sedating antihistamines, including Allegra, Claritin, Clarinex, and Zyrtec, are also used to treat hives, expecially hives that last longer than 6 weeks.

Less commonly, a child may need a steroid to treat his episode of hives.

Other treatments, especially for chronic hives, can sometimes include doxepin (Sinequan), an antidepressant that can work as a potent antihistamine, montelukast (Singulair), and medications such as ranitidine (Zantac) or cimetidine (Tagamet), which are more commonly used to treat reflux.

In some cases of persistent hives, your pediatrician might recommend that you give your child multiple medications, for example, both Zyrtec and Allegra, with Zantac!

Of course, the best treatment for hives, whenever possible, is to remove and then avoid whatever has triggering them.

What You Need To Know About Hives

Hives are not considered chronic or long-term until they last for six weeks or longer. Chronic hives are rarely caused by food allergies. In fact, triggers for chronic allergies are only found about 20 percent of the time.

What if no cause is found for your child’s chronic hives? Then your child has idiopathic hives, which should eventually go away.

What else should you know about your child’s hives?

Individual hives are also called welts (not whelps, a common misspelling for welts) or wheals.

It is a common myth that it has to be something ‘new’ that is causing your child’s hives, as it is much more common that your child has had something two, three or more times before it finally triggers hives.

And although an allergic reaction to a food is usually fairly quick, occurring within minutes to hours, it may take days or weeks for an antibiotic to trigger hives in your child. Your child might not even break out until a few weeks after finishing their last dose!

Also keep in mind that a pediatric allergist and/or pediatric dermatologist can often help your pediatrician figure out what is causing your child’s hives.

More on Your Child’s Hives

What is Skeeter Syndrome?

Skeeter syndrome is a large local reaction after a mosquito bite that can mimic an infection.

What’s your first thought if your child has a large swollen area that is hot, red, and either painful or itchy?

A child with Skeeter syndrome - a bite that quickly got red, hot, and swollen.
A child with Skeeter syndrome – a bite that quickly got red, hot, and swollen. Photo by Vincent Iannelli, MD

You’re probably thinking that this bite is infected, right? It was gone without treatment over about 48 hours.

What is Skeeter Syndrome?

While that is certainly a possibility, if the reaction occurs right after a bite or sting, it is much more likely to be an inflammatory reaction – Skeeter syndrome.

The American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology defines Skeeter syndrome as an inflammatory reaction to mosquito bites.
The term Skeeter syndrome was first used in a report by Simons and Peng in 1999.

Although the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology says that Skeeter syndrome is relatively rare, spend a few minutes with a pediatrician and they will likely tell you that we see it all of the time…

“The large local reactions to mosquito bites that we have designated as skeeter syndrome occur within hours of the bites and are characterized by the cardinal signs of inflammation: swelling (tumor), heat (calor), redness (rubor), and itching/pain (dolor). By inspection and palpation, it is impossible to differentiate between inflammation caused by infection and inflammation caused by an allergic response.”

Skeeter syndrome Case Studies

These reactions can be especially impressive, and scary, for parents if they occur on a child’s eyelid or penis – as loose tissue in these areas can lead to a lot of swelling.

So how can you tell if a child has Skeeter syndrome or cellulitis, an infection that requires antibiotics?

“The reactions were initially misdiagnosed as cellulitis and investigated and treated as such, although by history they developed within hours of a mosquito bite, a time frame in which it would have been highly unlikely for an infection to develop.”

Skeeter syndrome Case Studies

Although cellulitis can mimic or look just like Skeeter syndrome, it is the timing of the reaction, very soon after the bite, that will help you and your pediatrician make an accurate diagnosis. That’s important, because the treatments for Skeeter syndrome and cellulitis are very different.

In general, kids with Skeeter syndrome only require symptomatic care, perhaps an antihistamine and topical steroid cream, while cellulitis is treated with antibiotics.

Are there any other differences between Skeeter syndrome and cellulitis?

While cellulitis will likely continue to worsen, especially if it isn’t treated with antibiotics, you can expect the redness and swelling triggered by Skeeter syndrome to start to get better after two to three days. Keep in mind that many bites and stings do worsen over the first day or two though…

What Causes Skeeter Syndrome?

The large local reaction that occurs with Skeeter syndrome is triggered by antigens in the saliva of the mosquitoes.

While these typically just cause mild local reactions in most of us, others can have severe, delayed reactions, exaggerated local reactions, or very rarely, anaphylactic reactions.

“The children with skeeter syndrome remain healthy, except for recurrent large local inflammatory reactions to mosquito bites.”

Skeeter syndrome Case Studies

So what should you do for your child with Skeeter syndrome?

For one thing, use insect repellents so that they don’t get mosquito bites. And work to control the mosquitoes around your home.

You might also give them an age appropriate dose of a second-generation H1-antihistamine such as cetirizine to prevent or treat the reaction if they do get some bites.

Are mosquitoes the only insects that cause Skeeter syndrome?

By definition, yes.

But we often see these same type of large, local reactions (LLRs) after fire ant bites, bee stings, and other bites and stings.

“There is no clear definition of LLRs. They are generally described as any induration larger than 10cm in diameter around the insect sting. The swelling can occur immediately or 6 to 12 hours after the sting and can gradually increase over 24 to 48 hours. The swelling usually subsides after 3 to 10 days. LLRs represent a late-phase immunoglobulin E (IgE)–associated inflammation.”

Pansare et al on Summer Buzz: All You Need to Know about Insect Sting Allergies

Sweat bees, very small bees, for example, are notorious for “stinging” people around their eyes and causing what looks like periorbital cellulitis, as they like to drink the salt on our sweaty skin.

Is your child’s bite or sting infected?

Just remember, even if the area is hot, red, and swollen, if it got like that within hours of a bite, then it probably isn’t infected.

“The type of clinical reaction determines the risk of allergic reactions to future stings.”

Pansare et al on Summer Buzz: All You Need to Know about Insect Sting Allergies

And also be reassured that children who only have large local reactions are very unlikely to go on to have more severe, anaphylatic type reactions in the future.

More on Insect Bites and Stings

Is There a Cure for Peanut Allergies?

Oral immunotherapy and some other treatments are providing new options to help kids with severe food allergies avoid life-threatening reactions.

Many parents likely got excited recently when they read about a possible cure for peanut allergies.

Peanut allergy could be cured with probiotics
Medical News Today

While these types of treatments are called cures by some people, what they do is desensitize you to peanuts, so that if you have a reaction, it is less severe. Some don’t have reactions anymore though. Probiotics were just part of the ‘cure’ though. They were paired with oral immunotherapy.

Is There a Cure for Peanut Allergies?

So is there really is a cure for peanut allergies?

I’m guessing it doesn’t matter if you call it a cure or a treatment if you have a child with a severe peanut allergy, you really just want to know if it is available for your child, right?

And again, there isn’t a simple answer.

Although it does seem like they are being used more and more, many of these treatments are still being tested, so they likely aren’t available everywhere, or in some cases, anywhere outside of a trial.

Among the treatments for peanut allergies, besides avoidance and treating anaphylactic reactions with epinephrine, you some day soon might be able to get your child with peanut allergies:

  • a wearable skin patch to provide epicutaneous immunotherapy (EPIT)  – in phase III studies
  • a pill to provide orally administered biologic immunotherapy  – in phase III studies
  • oral immunotherapy with Xolair (FASTX) – in phase II studies
  • a combination of probiotics with peanut oral immunotherapy (PPOIT)
  • sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) – in phase III studies
  • a vaccine – in early phase I studies

How do these treatments work?

The patch is the easiest to explain. Kids simply apply a new patch that contains peanut protein on their skin each day.

Oral immunotherapy is similar, kids are exposed to peanut protein, but unlike the patch, the dose is steadily increased each day, until you read a maintenance dose, that you continue eating each day. Most of these treatments use some variation of the characterized oral desensitization immunotherapy (CODIT) method to control and maintain desensitization.

And these treatments are not just for peanuts. Similar studies are being done for eggs and milk. And theoretically, they can be done for anything that can trigger an IgE-mediated allergic reaction, from foods and medicines to environmental allergens.

The downside? In addition to side effects, in most cases, you have to continue eating the thing you are allergic to every day, otherwise your allergy might return.

So, Is There a Cure for Peanut Allergies?

While many of these treatments are promising, they are not ready for regular use in every doctor’s office.

“The aim of OIT is to administer a food allergen slowly, in small but steadily increasing doses, until the patient stops reacting to the food (termed becoming desensitized to the food). OIT studies have shown promising results, though adverse reactions are frequent and may cause significant side effects like abdominal pain, wheezing and/or diarrhea. Published data from placebo-controlled trials have shown that only 50 to 70 percent of patients attempting OIT complete desensitization, with the failures primarily due to side effects. Also, there currently are no standardized protocols or foods used in OIT and no FDA approved approach that could allow insurance to reimburse for this therapy. Thus, there are challenges with the current practice of OIT.”

FARE Statement on Oral Immunotherapy for Food Allergies

That doesn’t mean that you can’t get some of these treatments right now or overcome those challenges.

Avoiding peanuts is not always as easy as you think... Peanuts under my seat on a plane.
Avoiding peanuts is not always as easy as you think… Peanuts under my seat on a plane. Photo by Vincent Iannelli, MD

Just keep in mind that “An allergist doing OIT for patients in a private practice develops his/her own individualized protocols and uses his/her unique food preparation.”

If your child’s food allergy has led to severe stress and anxiety for your family, that might not matter though. You probably don’t want to wait anymore if there is a chance at reducing your child’s chance of having a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction.

Still, find a pediatric allergist who has a lot of experience doing private practice OIT.

On the other hand, if you are fine refilling your child’s epi-pens every year and working hard to avoid peanuts, then maybe wait until the jury comes in and we get an official recommendation and more standardized treatments become more widely available.

What Else Should You Be Doing About Food Allergies?

If you don’t do private practice OIT, then in addition to strictly avoiding the things to which your child is allergic and making sure that an epi-pen is always readily available, the latest guidelines recommend that your child have:

  • annual testing if they have a milk, egg, soy, or wheat allergy
  • testing every two to three years if they have a peanut, tree nut, fish, or shellfish allergy

Why retest?

Kids do sometimes outgrow their allergies, especially if the allergy isn’t to peanuts or tree nuts. And even for peanuts, about 20% of kids have a chance of outgrowing their allergy.

Also remember that it is now recommended that infants at high risk for peanut allergies, especially those with eczema, have an early introduction of peanut proteins, sometimes as early as four months of age.

Hopefully that will help decrease the number of kids who need these kinds of treatments in the future.

What to Know About Treating Peanut Allergies

Oral immunotherapy and some other treatments are providing new options to help kids with severe food allergies avoid life-threatening reactions.

More About Treating Peanut Allergies

Get Control of Your Child’s Allergy Triggers

Identifying your child’s allergy trigger or allergy season won’t make them away. It can help you learn to avoid or control them though, or at least help get prepared by starting your child’s allergy medicines before he is exposed.

What’s triggering your child’s allergies and asthma?

Is it the cat?

The roses she loves to smell?

The dust on all of the stuffed animals in her room?

The Cottonwood tree blooming in the yard next door?

How do you know?

Identifying Allergy Triggers

Roses are not a common allergy trigger.
Roses are not a common allergy trigger.

If your other kids are dog lovers, they are probably voting for the cat, but depending on the time of year, her pattern of symptoms, and where you live, there could be plenty of candidates.

One thing you can check off your list – the roses.

Allergies are typically caused by pollen from trees, grasses, and weeds – not other types of flowering plants, like roses, geraniums, or begonias, etc. These “allergy-friendly” plants don’t produce much pollen. Other plants with flowers that are said to be fairly non-allergenic include orchids, pansies, petunias, snapdragons, and zinnias, etc.

“Brightly colored flowers that attract bees and other insects or humming birds are generally not allergenic.”

Michael J. Schumacher, MB, FRACP, The University of Arizona

In general, plants with wind-borne pollen can trigger allergies.

Are your child’s allergies better after it rains? Since heavy rains can lower pollen counts in the air, that could be a hint to a seasonal allergy trigger.

What about when it is dry and windy? Does that make your child’s allergies worse? Since pollen is carried by the wind, a dry, windy day will likely mean that there is more pollen in the air, which is another hint to a seasonal allergy trigger.

Do your child’s year round allergies quickly get better when he is away from home for a few days or weeks? That could be a hint to something inside your house being a trigger, although if he traveled far away, to another area of the country, it could simply mean that he wasn’t exposed to the same pollen in the air.

Understanding Allergy Triggers

Year round, or perennial allergy symptoms, are likely caused by things inside your home.

If your child’s allergies only seem to be bad at very specific times of the year, then pollen from grasses, trees, or weeds could be the trigger. Which pollen is high in your area when your child’s allergy symptoms are acting up?

Allergy testing is always an option if your child’s allergies are hard to control, either skin testing or a blood test.

Indoor Allergens That Trigger Allergy Symptoms

Year round allergy symptoms can often be caused by things in your home:

  • Cat and dog dander
  • Dermatophagoides farinae and pteronyssinus (dust mites)
  • Mice (mouse allergens/mouse urine proteins)
  • Cockroach saliva, feces, and body parts (cockroach allergens)

While allergy testing can help you figure out which to blame, if you don’t have any indoor pets and can eliminate mold in the house, then maybe you can blame dust mites.

Weeds That Trigger Allergy Symptoms

Most people think of ragweed as the classic weed that can trigger seasonal allergies. Often described as being “packed with pollen,” each ragweed plant produces up to one billion pollen grains each season! These ragweed pollen grains are carried by the wind and can trigger allergy symptoms from early to mid-August through September and October – fall allergy season.

Others weeds that commonly trigger allergies include:

  • nettle
  • mugwort
  • Russian thistle (tumbleweed)
  • plantain
  • Rough marsh elder
  • Rough pigweed
  • Sheep sorrel

Again, if necessary, allergy testing can help you figure out to which weed your child is allergic, but if their allergies peak in the fall, it is likely triggered by weeds.

Trees That Trigger Allergy Symptoms

Which trees are most likely to trigger allergy symptoms?

It depends on where you live, but in the spring, mountain cedar, pecan, elm, maple, birch, ash, oak, and cottonwood, are common offenders.

If you are allergic to tree pollen, you can expect symptoms in late winter to early spring.

Grasses That Trigger Allergy Symptoms

While many people don’t think of summer as a typical allergy season, that is actually when grass pollen is in the air.

Do you know which grasses are commonly grown in your area?

Bermuda grass, Timothy, Kentucky Blue, Johnson, Rye, or Fescue? Are your kids allergic to any of them? If so, their allergy symptoms will probably act up in the late spring and early summer.

Molds That Trigger Allergy Symptoms

Depending on where you live, molds can either cause seasonal symptoms (colder climates) or they can be a cause of year round symptoms.

And you can expect outdoor mold spore counts to be extra high when it is warm and humid.

Inside, mold grows best in parts of the house that are cool and damp, with common suspects including:

  • Cladosporium herbarum
  • Penicillium notatum
  • Alternaria alternata
  • Aspergillus fumigatus

Have you seen any of these names on your child’s allergy test results? Although it is considered part of our natural environment, you can keep mold from growing inside your home.

What To Know About Allergy Triggers

Identifying your child’s allergy trigger or allergy season won’t make them  away. It can help you learn to avoid or control them though, or at least help get prepared by starting your child’s allergy medicines before he is exposed.

More Information about Allergy Triggers

How To Avoid Peanut Allergies

To prevent peanut allergies, parents of high risk kids are being told to go out of their way to be sure that they actually feed their infants peanut-containing foods!

Infants with eczema are at high risk for developing peanut allergies.
Infants with eczema are at high risk for developing peanut allergies. Photo courtesy of the NIAID.

The worst part of having a severe allergy to peanuts isn’t the high price of EpiPens.

It is that peanut allergies can be deadly, even when you have access to an EpiPen.

And since there is no 100% fool proof way to avoid peanuts and peanut containing foods, doctors have been trying to come up with ways to prevent kids from ever developing peanut allergies.

The first efforts, to avoid peanuts and other high risk foods during pregnancy and early infancy, likely backfired, leading to even more kids with peanut allergies. That’s why recommendations for starting solid foods changed back in 2008, when the American Academy of Pediatrics began to tell parents to no longer delay giving solid foods after age 4 to 6 months and that it wasn’t necessary to delay “the introduction of foods that are considered to be highly allergic, such as fish, eggs, and foods containing peanut protein.”

The latest guidelines are the next evolution of that older advice.

Now, in addition to simply not delaying introducing allergy type foods, as part of a new strategy to prevent peanut allergies, parents of high risk kids are being told to go out of their way to be sure that they actually give their infants peanut-containing foods!

Prevention of Peanut Allergies

Developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, with 25 professional organizations, federal agencies, and patient advocacy groups, these clinical practice guidelines recommend that parents:

  1. introduce peanut-containing foods into your infant’s diet as early as 4 to 6 months of age if they have severe eczema, egg allergy, or both (strongly consider allergy testing first)
  2. introduce peanut-containing foods into your infant’s diet around 6 months of age if they have mild to moderate eczema
  3. introduce peanut-containing foods into your infant’s diet in an age-appropriate manner with other solid foods if your infant has no eczema or any food allergy

Keep in mind that it is possible that your baby already has a peanut allergy, so discuss your plan to introduce peanut-containing foods with your pediatrician first. But don’t be in such a rush that you make peanut-containing foods your baby’s first food. Offer a cereal, veggie, fruit, or meat first. If tolerated, and you know that your baby is ready for solid food, and with your pediatricians okay, then consider moving to peanut-containing foods.

And although not always necessary, it is possible to do allergy testing even on younger infants. Testing is an especially good idea if your infant has severe eczema or an egg allergy. For these higher risk kids, referral to an allergy specialist might even be a good idea, where infants can start peanut containing foods in their office (supervised feeding) or as part of a graded oral challenge. Your pediatrician might also consider supervised feeding for your higher risk child who is not allergic to peanuts.

Peanut-Containing Baby Food Recipes

So how do you give a 4 or 6 month old peanut-containing foods?

It’s not like Gerber has any 1st or 2nd foods with peanuts – at least not yet…

So for now, you can:

  • add 2 to 3 tablespoons of hot water to 2 teaspoons of thinned, smooth peanut butter. Stir until the peanut butter dissolves and is well blended. You can feed it to your baby after it has cooled.
  • mix 2 to 3 tablespoons of a fruit or veggie that your baby is already tolerating in 2 teaspoons of thinned, smooth peanut butter.
  • mix 2 to 3 tablespoons of a fruit or veggie that your baby is already tolerating in 2 teaspoons of peanut flour or peanut butter powder.

Each of these recipes will provide your baby with about 2g of peanut protein. Since the goal is to give your child about 6 to 7g a week, you should offer them three separate times.

During the first feeding, it is important to only “offer your infant a small part of the peanut serving on the tip of the spoon,” and then wait for at least 10 minutes to make sure there are no signs of an allergic reaction, such as hives, face swelling, trouble breathing, or vomiting, etc.

Of course, because of the risk of choking, you should not give infants or toddlers whole peanuts or chunks of peanut butter.

More Information on Preventing Peanut Allergies

Treating Hard To Control Allergies

Allergies (hay fever or allergic rhinits) are common in kids.

That makes it a good idea to learn how to control your child’s allergies.

What Triggers Your Child’s Allergy Symptoms?

There are several good reasons to try and figure out what your child’s allergy triggers are, including that it can help you:

  1. avoid the trigger – stay away from cats if your child is allergic to cats
  2. minimize the trigger – control dust mites in your home if that is a trigger
  3. know to give your child her allergy medicine before she will be exposed – start medicines before fall allergy season if she is allergic to ragweed

That doesn’t mean your child needs an allergy test though. You can often figure out what triggers your child’s allergies if you are mindful of the pattern of her symptoms (year round vs seasonal), what she is doing or exposed to when they worsen, and by checking pollen counts on both good and bad allergy days.

Allergy Medicines for Kids

Unfortunately, simply trying to avoid allergy triggers isn’t usually enough.

Most kids with allergies also take one or more of these medicines, many of which are now available over-the-counter, without a prescription:

  • short acting antihistamines – Benadryl (can be sedating)
  • long acting antihistamines – Allegra, Claritin, Zyrtec
  • non-antihistamines – Singulair
  • steroid nasal sprays – Flonase, Nasacort, Nasonex, Omnaris, Rhinocort
  • antihistamine nasal sprays – Astelin, Astepro, Patanase
  • allergy eye drops – Pataday, Zaditor

And to work best, your child should likely start his allergy medicines before his allergy season and take them every day.

Treating Hard To Control Allergies

So what do you do when these allergy medicines don’t control your child’s allergies?

The first thing you likely want to do, and something many people overlook, is to make sure that your child’s symptoms are really caused by allergies. Remember, just because your child has a runny nose, it doesn’t mean that he has allergies. Or even if he often has allergies, it doesn’t mean that allergies are causing every runny nose. If your child has a runny nose and congestion and allergy medicines aren’t working, then he may just have a cold.

If your child does have allergies and they are just hard to control, then you might want to:

  • review your allergy trigger control methods (allergy proof dust covers on mattresses, no mold in house, keep windows closed in the car, etc.)
  • consider if you are triggering your child’s allergies even more, for example, dust mites and mold like humidity, so a humidifier in your child’s room would not be a good idea if your child is allergic to dust mites or mold
  • make sure your child is taking the correct dose of his allergy medicine
  • make sure your child is taking the correct medication for his allergy symptoms, keeping in mind that antihistamines don’t treat congestion, but Singulair (montelukast) and steroid nasal sprays do
  • try a different allergy medicine, although tachyphlaxis reportedly doesn’t occur with antihistamines – they shouldn’t become less effective over time
  • try a combination of medicines, for example, a long acting antihistamine plus a steroid nasal spray
  • try a different combination of medicines, for example, Singular plus an antihistamine nasal spray
  • make sure your child is able to avoid second hand smoke
  • consider that your child could have vasomotor rhinitis or nonallergic rhinitis
  • ask about allergy testing, which can be done by your pediatrician (blood tests at almost any age) and/or a pediatric allergy specialist (blood or skin tests)

A pediatric allergist can also be helpful in diagnosing and managing your child’s allergies, especially if you think your child needs to start oral (sublingual immunotherapy) or shot (subcutaneous immunotherapy) allergy preventative treatments.

What To Know About Treating Hard To Control Allergies

Allergies can be hard to treat and control in kids, but they can often be managed if you understand how to avoid common allergy triggers and use allergy medicines properly.

For More Information On Treating Hard To Control Allergies