Standing in line at the grocery store recently I was reading the headlines on the tabloids. I don’t believe the majority of them since it is nothing to see two different magazines next to each other with contradictory headlines. I pulled People off the rack with the headline Britney’s Mental Illness for my husband to see. I made the comment “For once, a headline I believe.” I have never been a Britney Spears fan and to be honest, I am tired of hearing about her.
It disgusts me that America is more interested in the Spears sisters, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and what celebrity is pregnant when there are other things going on in the world. We have soldiers who are dying in the Middle East, those places destroyed by Hurricane Katrina are not completely restored, and there is a presidential election just months away and we need to decide who is going to run the country.
I don’t know what possessed me to open that issue of People up. I can only recall purchasing one edition of People in my entire life because they ran a half decent article on food allergies. I ended up buying this edition of People because of an article on page 121 about a little boy with “a rare food allergy.”
That rare food allergy is something called eosinophilic entreopathy (EE). It’s something I have always worried about in one of my children because her allergies are rather extensive and extreme. Turns out I spent $3.99 on a magazine for an article that amounted to about one page front and back after removing the photos that contained little information about a complex disease related to food allergies. It did paint a picture of what life is like for families affected by EE but it did little to educate. (I would like to note that 6 pages were devoted to speculating over what mental condition Britney Spears has.)
So what is eosinophilic enteropathy? The simple explanation is it’s an inflammatory disease of any part of the digestive track. Eosinophilic esophagitis takes place in the esophagus, eosiniophilic gastroenteritis takes place in the stomach and small intestine and eosiniophilic colitis affects the large intestines. The medical explanation is a bit more complex. It deals with a white blood cell that is made in the bone marrow called eosinophils.
Eosinophils are named after the red dye eosin that is used to view them under a microscope. They accumulate in diseases like asthma, leukemia and autoimmune diseases and normally protect the body from parasites. Obviously, parasites do not play a role in asthma, leukemia and autoimmune diseases. This over production of eosinophils is an improper immune response to an allergen. They contain a toxin that is effective in fighting parasites but damages the body when released inappropriately. During the worst of asthma attacks they cause scaring of the lungs. In allergic response to food eating becomes almost impossible.
The release of too many eosinophils during an allergic response causes inflammation, polyps, ulcers and tissue damage. Common symptoms may include pain, swelling, skin rash or hives, reflux, choking, difficulty swallowing, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, bloody stools or stools that contain mucus, abdominal cramping, diarrhea, fever, anemia, malabsorption, and developmental delay. Other symptoms such as esophageal rings and thickening of the stomach, intestines or esophagus can only be seen during an endoscopy and biopsy during diagnosis. Endoscopy and biopsy are the only way to confirm an eosinophilic disorder.
There is no cure for eosinophilic disorders. The only treatment is to identify the food or foods causing the problem and totally eliminate them from the diet.
It is estimated that 1 in 50,000 are affected by eosinophilic disorders. They are uncommon enough that doctors don’t have a good understanding of them, little research has been done and the disease is often missed because of this. These disorders can be caused by one food allergy or many.
Unfortunately, the only cases that get even a minute amount of attention are the cases like the one in People Magazine where the individual affected can only eat a small handful of foods. The boy in the story has a total of six foods that he can eat without getting sick and he gets his nutrients from elemental formulas. They are similar to baby formula but all proteins have been removed and the liquid is made up of amino acid chains that are easily digested and metabolized. Many times these formulas have to be administered through a feeding tube directly into the stomach because of the difficulty some people have in drinking enough of the formula.
As the number of people, especially children, with food allergies continue to skyrocket, more and more cases of people with eosinophilic disorders are going to appear. Even though these disorders, on rare occasion, get a place in a widely circulating publication, it’s usually buried between stories of Britney Spears and a four page pictorial of a celebrity wedding. While these things might be more interesting, they aren’t as important.
