ABC Radio National - The Health Report
This is the most serious and life threatening allergic reaction. An Emergency Physician from Fremantle, Western Australia, studied over a thousand people with anaphylaxis.
The most serious and potentially life threatening allergic reaction is called anaphylaxis. At its most severe your blood pressure drops drastically and your airways close down, and every year there are a few deaths as a result.
Peanut allergy tends to get the most publicity. But there is some confusion about the best way to grade whether someone’s having a mild, moderate or severe anaphylactic reaction, and just what are the commonest causes.
Dr Simon Brown is an Emergency Physician at Fremantle Hospital in Western Australia, but previously was head of ED at the Royal Hobart Hospital, which is where he did this study of over a thousand people with anaphylaxis.
Simon Brown: We got a fairly good picture of the causes. In South Eastern Australia it’s roughly divided into quarters, about a quarter of people’s reactions are caused by insect stings, particularly ant stings in Tasmania.
Norman Swan: What kind of ant?
Simon Brown: Jack jumpers or bullants. That hasn’t been recognised to be such a huge problem in the past, but jack jumper ants were the single most important cause of anaphylaxis in our study.
Continued …
Posted by . Filed under: Library • Radio Interviews • ABC Radio National • Permalink