A Project by Jennifer Sohn, Elise Gan, and Shannon Geary

The Question

15 million Americans are estimated to have food allergies.

Among those are 5.9 million children, about 2 per school classroom1.

Food allergies are on the rise, with the number of pediatric hospitalizations for allergic reactions to food more than doubling between the 2001 and 20062.

Figure 1 – average number of hospital discharges per year among children under age 18 years with any diagnosis related to food allergy: United States, 1998–20062

The most common allergens for children are milk, eggs, and peanuts. In adults, they are tree nuts, peanuts, and shellfish – notice the common allergen? Peanuts are one of the most prevalent allergens, about 0.6% of all food allergies 3 . While that proportion seems small, that works out to 90,000 Americans, including two members of this research group!

With this important context in mind, one can ask:

What is the molecular action of peanut proteins in producing hypersensitivity in people? How do current therapies work to overcome this hypersensitivity?

8 Comments

  1. Kenneth Li

    Great context and intro! In my opinion it is not necessary to point out the figure where the statistics come from directly, as it is immediately posted after.

  2. Arden V. Fereshetian

    Effective use of the various font sizes and formatting to highlight the key statistics and the question being answered. The graph however is a bit small, and only becomes clear once clicked on to zoom in. Perhaps edit the photo to display larger dimensions. Otherwise great opening page.

  3. http://mobileautodetailingkc.com

    Very good blog article.Really thank you! Want more.

  4. Tobias Tasman

    Hi tufts.edu owner, Thanks for the well-presented post!

  5. http://kheymomo.blogspot.com/

    do you already know the vaccines you should give to your new babies come on and visit my site to find out
    http://kheymomo.blogspot.com/

  6. Lydia Rodarte

    To the tufts.edu owner, Your posts are always well presented.

  7. Carmon Akhurst

    Dear tufts.edu administrator, Your posts are always on point.

  8. Upadlosc

    Na naszej stronie znajdziecie więcej informacji na temat upadłości konsumenckiej.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.