A patient has a food allergy to eggs She was receiving night

A patient has a food allergy to eggs. She was receiving nightly tube feedings with a formula containing eggs as one of the partial sources of protein. Why do you think her allergy was not ever life threatening?

Solution

Food allergies can be highly deletrious to health. The allergenicity of a food item arises mostly due to inability of the gastro-intestinal tract to identify it correctly and elicit an appropriate digestive response against it.

According to the question, the pateint is suffering from allergy to eggs. However, nightly feeding with formula of eggs and partial source of protein is not causing any allergy or impairment to health. It should be noted here that eggs are very rich source of protein. Most of the people who have allergy to eggs are inable to digest protein due to diminished protein digesting enzymes in their stomach. However, infustion of partially digested proteins causes a differential effect on the protein-digestion mechanism of the intestine. Addition of the partially digested protein helps the intestinal enzymes to further digest the protein into smaller polypeptides. As the concentration and activity of enzymes increases with response to the partial source of protein, the inner wall of the stomach releases hydrochloric acid which drops the pH of stomach and further improves activation of peptidases. These peptidases then act upon the egg proteins and help digest them. This makes the patient able to digest egg protein as well.

This approach is also commonly practised in some populations of human which are evolutionarily unable to digest milk proteins after the age of 15-20 due to lactose intolerace. Supplementation of curd and fermented dairy products make them able to digest milk protein.

Thus, this explanation suggests that even though the patient is sensistive to egg intake, a partially digested protein diet and co-supplementation with eggs will definitely improve her digestion without evoking allergic response.