Black children have significantly higher rates of shellfish and fish allergies than White children, in addition to having higher odds of wheat allergy, suggesting that race may play an important role in how children are affected by food allergies, researchers at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Rush University Medical Center and two other hospitals have found.; "National surveys have shown that the prevalence of food allergy in general has been increasing in children in the U.S. among all races/ethnicities. However, much remains unknown about why certain allergies are more likely to affect children of particular races and ethnicities and how those racial/ethnic minority patients are affected," said the lead principal investigator of the study and senior author Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.