Nursery World - A Unique Child: Health

Children's allergies and their symptoms are outlined by Dr Raj Thakkar.

Many early years settings are used to caring for children with allergies and intolerances, but they are conditions that can be hard to understand, and for the medical profession, they are not always easy to diagnose or treat. Last month the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) issued new guidelines on identifying and treating allergies in children.

As a GP, I find parents often ask if their child's adverse reaction to food stems from an allergy. While this is a perfectly reasonable question, and an allergy may be the cause, it is worth remembering that adverse reactions to foods may occur without allergy. Other possible causes may be the body's inability to process foods, food poisoning through toxins or infection, or indeed chemical reactions rather like the side-effects of a drug.

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