The sesame - peanut conundrum in Israel: Reevaluation of food allergy prevalence in young children.

Abstract Background Food allergies are on the rise worldwide. A previous cross-sectional study, from 2002 in Israel estimated the prevalence of IgE-mediated food allergy (FA) among young children at 0.85%. Although sesame was found to be a common allergen, peanuts were found to be a rare allergen. Objective To determine the prevalence and distributions of IgE-mediated food allergies among young children in Israel compared to previous data. Patients and Methods 1932 young children (56% males, 44% females) with a mean age of 22.4 months (range 18–30 months) were sequentially, recruited from 15 government family healthcare centers in north Israel. Parents completed a questionnaire with two screening questions for suspected FA. Subjects with suspected FA underwent further evaluation including telephone interview, skin prick tests and oral food challenge (OFC) as needed. Results After analyzing the questionnaires, 146 subjects were suspected to have FA. Seventy-nine subjects were excluded by telephone interview and thirteen were excluded based on negatives OFC .We identified 54/1932 (2.8%) young children with 75 IgE-mediated food allergies. Thirty-nine out of 54 (72.2%) had allergy to one food, nine (16.6%) to two foods. The most common food allergens were cow’s milk 1%, eggs 0.88%, sesame 0.93%, tree nuts 0.57%, peanuts 0.2% and fish 0.2%. Conclusions The prevalence of IgE-mediated FA among young children in Israel has increased dramatically from 0.85% to 2.8%. The relative prevalence of the most common food allergens is similar to that identified in 2002, with a high prevalence of sesame and low prevalence of peanut FA.