Allergic to eggs, the flu shot or flu meds? Maybe, maybe not.

Clinton wrote this …

First it was H1N1 virus itself, then the vaccine became the shot heard ‘round the

CDC

world. Everywhere. All the time. Practically. Is the virus real? Is it as bad as people say? The government should do more, faster! The government should stay out of health care!

The most recent news has been about the drugs that affect the virus – the bug recently mutated into a resistant strain in a very limited population of people who were ill before they had the flu. On Monday, GSK stopped a clinical trial in Canada of an anti-flu drug because too many people in the study had anaphylactic shock.

Which brings me to Maya Jerath, one of our allergy and immunology experts in the Thurston Arthritis Research Center.

Here’s what she told ABC News yesterday about the drug allergy cases, trying to assure people not to worry.

On Monday the doc told me that she’s seen a lot more people come into her clinic concerned that they’re allergic to eggs, and they couldn’t get the flu shot.

Most people, the doc says, got a goose egg on the egg allergy test. She says they likely were never allergic to eggs at all (they may have carried the diagnosis over from childhood), had hives unrelated to food allergies, or they were allergic to eggs, but the reaction was such that the flu shot was still advised – by an allergist.

In fact, not to get too far from the flu, but she said 20% of adults think they have a food allergy, only 2% – 3% actually do. The others have a food intolerance. The difference is that an allergic reaction can be deadly; an intolerance is intolerable for many hours, but it’s not life threatening. (We’re not talking about environmental allergies – allergic rhinitis.)

This is a big deal to people who restrict their diets thinking they have no choice. People who are truly allergic have to be constantly vigilant for the trigger. Some limit their diets to just a few foods – one patient thought she could only eat organic chicken and a couple of starches. Parents can do this to the extreme, unwittingly pushing their kids into a failure to thrive.

Bottom line: If you think you might be allergic to eggs, or meds or cats, see an allergist.

There’s no sense in scrambling your life if you don’t have to. And get a flu shot.