Local study looks for allergy causes

Are food allergies caused by genetics or the environment?

Allergies are often inherited from parent to child, but some allergies pop up in families with no known history.

While 8-year-old Brian Hackman of Island Lake is allergic to nuts and eggs, his twin sister Sarah has no allergies whatsoever.

To address this mystery, Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago is looking for 1,000 families of children with allergies.

While many institutions are studying allergies, Children's Memorial is conducting the only family-based study in the nation. Not only are kids being tested, but their family members as well, to determine any connections.

Participants undergo a skin test and a blood test to check for allergic reactions, and answer a detailed questionnaire about their diet, environment, medications, pets, etc.

One goal, food allergy program manager Christine Szychlinski said, is to test the "hygiene hypothesis," which suspects that children kept in "too-clean" urban or suburban environments may not develop the proper immune response of kids raised in the country.

The study already found, for example, a much higher rate of allergies in Chicago than in rural China, despite comparable diets.

Since starting in 2005, the study has enlisted 600 families, and is still open to more participants.

For information, see childrensmrc.org, or call project coordinator Deanna Caruso at (312) 573-7755.