Keeping allergic reactions in check
Most people with allergies have found a way of going about it. It could be a simple daily tablet taken to handle the morning nasal discomfort or it could be the inhaler that they carry around that keeps them protected. A friend’s child recently suffered a near fatal allergic reaction. An allergy simply put is when the body goes into overdrive over a substance that it considers noxious but may not necessarily be so. The child in the above case had consumed groundnut paste.
The doctor described it as an anaphylactic reaction. According to www.merckmanuals.com, an anaphylactic reaction is a sudden, widespread, potentially severe and life-threatening allergic reaction.
It states that anaphylactic reactions often begin with uneasiness, followed by tingling sensations and dizziness. Severe symptoms such as generalised itching and hives, swelling, wheezing and difficulty breathing, fainting due to reduced blood pressure, and/or other allergy symptoms that follow rapidly. People may have nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, and diarrhoea. These reactions can quickly become life threatening with people collapsing, stopping to breathe and seizures within one to two minutes unless emergency treatment is given. The symptoms may recur four to eight hours after the initial exposure or later.
In my friend’s case, the child should never have consumed the groundnuts, unfortunately, this was all new to the mother. Anaphylactic reactions require emergency treatment and it is advised that people with such conditions should always carry their emergency medicine. These include medicines classified as antihistamines such as diphenhydramine and a device called an epinephrine pen (EPI-PEN). The Epi-pen, a syringe that contains the hormone called epinephrine/adrenaline, which restores the lowered blood pressure can be administered by the patient themselves. They should then proceed to the hospital for further management.
They are most likely associated with ingestion of drugs especially those classified as penicillins such as amoxicillin. This list also includes insect stings, foods such as nuts, seafood and even eggs and latex but this is only a limited list. The site writes that an anaphylactic reaction does not usually occur after first exposure to the causative substance/organism called an allergen but after subsequent exposure. “Any allergen that causes an anaphylactic reaction in a person is likely to cause that reaction with subsequent exposures, unless measures are taken to prevent it.”
They are said to begin within 15 minutes of exposure to the allergen.
The author is a pharmacist
