Key Messages - Impact Of Allergy

• Allergy is common; it has increased in amount, severity and complexity.
• About 1 in 3 of the population or 20 million have a disease where allergy may be involved.
• About 7 million have allergies severe enough to require specialist allergy care.
• Allergy is especially common in children
• Food allergy affects 7% of children and 3% of adults.
• One in 70 children is now allergic to peanuts and 1 in 50 is allergic to nuts.The number of children affected with peanut allergy has increased 3 times in 10 years.
• Hospital admissions for anaphylaxis (severe and potentially life threatening reactions) have increased 7-fold in the last 10 years.
• Deaths occur due to allergy, more often in children and young adults: this includes food allergy (eg peanut and milk); bee or wasp sting allergy, and acute asthma. Severe asthma attacks and asthma deaths are often caused by allergy, and are thus preventable but this is often not recognised.
• Many patients have multiple allergies e.g. asthma, hay fever, eczema, and acute reactions including rash and swelling, caused by different allergic triggers.
• Drug allergy is a major problem and only a fraction of patients with, or suspected to have, this get accurate allergy diagnosis. This is an important cause of hospital admission and consumes NHS resources. Further illness can be prevented by identifying the drug responsible. The opposite problem is also common – where patients are wrongly labelled as drug allergic and as a result have expensive alternative drugs or procedures which are not necessary.
• Even hay fever can be severe and impairs quality of life and affects performance in work and at school and in examinations.
• Many allergies affect quality of life and impair work and school performance. For example, peanut allergy has a greater effect on the quality of life than diabetes requiring insulin injections.
• Commonly allergy is not recognised as the trigger for disease eg eczema, asthma or nose symptoms, and these problems are treated with drugs, whereas diagnosis of the allergy can prevent or reduce the symptoms. For example diagnosis of a food allergy in a child with eczema, allows avoidance and the eczema can disappear.
• Accurate allergy diagnosis is important and improves outcomes and reduces illness. Sadly many patients are not offered this.
• There are currently only about 30 allergy specialists (consultants in allergy) working in England.
• Although there are about 80 allergy clinics in England, most are part-time, deal with small numbers of patients usually with restricted allergic problems, and are provided by specialists whose main role is to work in other specialities. There are only 8 specialist allergy departments led by full-time allergists.