Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Food Allergy Prevalence Shows Steady Increase, Care Gaps Remain

Food allergy affects more than 33 million people in the United States, including an estimated 10.8% of adults and 7.6% of children, according to a new national indicator report from Food Allergy Research & Education nonprofit organization. Nearly half of adults with food allergy developed at least 1 allergy during adulthood, which means clinicians might need to consider new-onset food allergy in differential diagnoses for adult patients. Shellfish and wheat are the most commonly reported …

Does Your Patient Really Have Penicillin Allergy? Probably Not.

A large international study found that direct oral challenge (DOC) can be a safe and effective strategy for identifying patients who have a true penicillin allergy. Researchers evaluated hospitalized adults who self-reported a penicillin allergy—a label that historically is attached to about 10% of patients, according to the study presented in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Among the 5,121 patients assessed, 30.7% underwent DOC; of these, 95.5% (95% confidence interval, 94.3%–96.5%) were safely “delabeled,” after assessing and …

Allergic Rhinitis Rarely Emerges in Adulthood

While many urgent care patients present in the early days of spring with the common symptoms of stuffy nose and sneezing, an allergic rhinitis diagnosis can be somewhat nuanced, according to a review in JAMA Network. Allergic rhinitis, seasonal allergic rhinitis, perennial allergic rhinitis, and non-allergic rhinitis each have different typical symptoms, and therefore, there can be differences in treatment, according to the authors. In a follow-up, MedPage Today reports the majority of allergic rhinitis …

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