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Peanut allergies are the most dangerous food allergy a child can have, but there is a new FDA-approved treatment that can save lives.

That is changing. On Friday, President Biden signed into law the FASTER Act, which adds sesame to the list of foods that manufacturers must identify on prepackaged labels. Here are some key takeaways.; Dr. Ruchi S. Gupta, a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said these sections of the FASTER Act put food allergies on a similar level with other health conditions because it centralizes efforts to monitor food allergies. "We need to do a deeper dive into what is 10, 11, 12" on the list of top allergens, said Dr. Gupta, a senior author of the 2019 study. "And what is potentially on the horizon to be a bigger problem than it is now."

Allergies are complicated, especially food-borne allergies. Sometimes the reactions are simple, a rash or eczema that can be easily treated with an antihistamine like Benadryl, or a hydrocortisone cream. But others are severe, and there is nothing more terrifying to a parent than seeing their child have an allergic reaction. As little as a single drop of milk can cause a person to go into anaphylactic shock if they have a severe milk allergy.; "Because lactose intolerance is so common, people don't think of milk allergy as something that can be significant or severe," said Ruchi Gupta, MD, director of the Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, as reported by WebMD.

The rate of children hospitalized for food-induced anaphylaxis rose by 25% from 2006 to 2012 – from 1.2 to 1.5 per 100,000 – according to a 2019 analysis of data from pediatric hospitals in the United States. And severe symptoms were more often linked to milk than to peanuts or tree nuts, the study showed.; "Because lactose intolerance is so common, people don't think of milk allergy as something that can be significant or severe," said Ruchi Gupta, MD, director of the Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Nearly 3% of United States adults self-reported having peanut allergy, with 1.8% "having convincing peanut allergy," researchers wrote in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.; The new findings should encourage primary care physicians to "assess any patient who states they have a negative reaction to peanut by taking a good history, testing and referring to an allergist," Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a coauthor of the study, told Healio Primary Care.

Sensor-based inhalers integrated into health care providers' clinical workflows may help improve medication adherence and support children with asthma - and their families - to more effectively manage this condition, according to a new Northwestern and Lurie Children's study published in Pediatrics.; "Emerging connected technologies can help improve patient health, with this randomized-controlled clinical trial showing that pediatric asthma patients with access to inhaler sensors report better asthma control and quality of life than patients who only received a standardized asthma education curriculum," said study lead Dr. Ruchi Gupta, professor of pediatrics at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Director of the Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research (CFAAR).

[A] report, believed to be the first to provide an estimate of peanut allergy in adults, suggests that at least 4.5 million adults in the U.S. are impacted by the allergy.; "Given the high prevalence of peanut allergy among U.S. adults, additional therapies are needed to help address this growing burden of disease," Dr. Ruchi Gupta, study author and professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, said in the Eurekalert.org news release.

Sensor-based inhalers integrated into health care providers' clinical workflows may help improve medication adherence and support children with asthma, a new study suggests. The study showed that connected inhalers, which use Bluetooth sensors that attach to participants' asthma inhalers to detect medication use and share the data with physicians, may promote adherence to recommended controller medication use and proactively detect worsening of asthma symptoms.; "Emerging connected technologies can help improve patient health, with this randomized-controlled clinical trial showing that pediatric asthma patients with access to inhaler sensors report better asthma control and quality of life than patients who only received a standardized asthma education curriculum," said lead author Ruchi Gupta from Northwestern University.