Amazingly prevalent misdiagnoses: Two million British children ‘wrongly labelled’ with food allergies
As little as a tenth of the diagnoses were correct
More than two million children are wrongly labelled as having a food allergy and are being placed on unnecessary and potentially harmful diets, according to the NHS watchdog. The National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) is issuing the first ever guidance to GPs on how to spot and diagnose food allergies in children. It warns that hospital admissions for food allergies have increased by 500 per cent since 1990 and food allergies are becoming more common.
But, when reviewing evidence on the extent of the problem, it found that the numbers of people suffering with the problem is exaggerated. Only around one in five of people who think they have a food allergy actually do, the draft guidance from Nice said.
Studies have shown that where as up to 17 per cent of people think they are allergic to milk, when challenged with diary products, only three per cent were actually showed symptoms.
Seven per cent said they were allergic to eggs but the real figure was less than two per cent.
More than a third said they were allergic to some form of food but when tested this turned out to be just one in ten.
Nice say that children diagnosed with allergies will then end up being deprived of certain foods – such as dairy products, nuts or wheat – which could lead to dietary problems. “This (research) implies that there are a lot of children (up to about 20 per cent) with wrongly self reported diagnoses of various food allergies who are not eating certain foods because they think they are allergic to them and have not had a confirmed diagnosis,” a spokesman said. “This impacts on their quality of life.”
If one in five children are being misdiagnosed this could mean that up to 2.4 million children and teenagers under the age of 19 have been wrongly labelled as having a food allergy.
Researchers have previously warned that home testing and mail order kits which may not be accurate have encouraged people to believe they are allergic to certain foods and has led them to avoid them unnecessarily. It can take months for a diagnosis to be made on the NHS, leaving parents feeling frustrated.
The guidance aims to clarify when GPs should consider the possibility of a food allergy and when further testing is necessary. Unexplained rashes, wheezing, running nose, swellings, vomiting, difficulty swallowing and abdominal pain should all raise the possibility of a food allergy, the guidance said.
When doctors suspect a food allergy is responsible, they should take a detailed medical history asking about other family members with allergies, pets, household smoking habits and how long symptoms have persisted.
Then, if an allergy is likely, tests can be conducted including avoiding the suspect food for a period of time, skin prick tests and blood tests to detect a raised immune system. Alternative methods of testing including those based on chiropractic, hair analysis and acupuncture should not be used, the guidance said.
Where multiple allergies are suspected, the child does not respond to treatment or is showing signs of poor growth, GPs should refer to a specialist, it said.
Lindsey McManus, head of information and training at the charity, Allergy UK, said: “Waiting times on the NHS are too long and out of desperation parents seek out high street tests that have no scientific evidence backing them. “We need better services at GP level and more specialists.
“True food allergy is becoming more common but they are not as common as many think and some people do cut out foods unnecessarily because they have had an adverse reaction and presume it is an allergy. In children this can be dangerous. It is often the major food groups that people cut out and diary, for example, is very important for growing children. “We welcome the Nice guidance and hope services improve so people can get a reliable diagnosis from their doctor.”
Dr Judith Richardson, Associate Director of the Centre for Clinical Practice at Nice, said: “Food allergies in children are becoming more common, therefore it is important that there are appropriate, evidence-based approaches in treating those with this condition.
“Many of the symptoms are common to other conditions, so it’s not always easy to identify and diagnose food allergy correctly. “This will be the first evidence-based guideline on how health professionals and others who work with young children should diagnose and assess food allergies in children.
“With this guidance we want more of the right children being asked the right sort of questions so GPs are better able to discriminate which patients need further investigation. We want to avoid problems with some children who it seems are having foods excluded from their diets unnecessarily.”
NHS services for people with allergies were severely criticised under the previous government due to a lack of specialists and long waiting times. Often charities and voluntary groups were left to plug the gap, a review found.
Unfounded melanoma scare in Britain
It was all just overdiagnosis of non-cancerous moles and spots. British doctors see so few real melanomas that they wouldn’t know one if they saw one. Where I live we see LOTS of sun and we do have lots of melanomas. Yet even experienced dermatologists sometimes have to rely on a biopsy to make a diagnosis.
I always thought the scare was hilarious since melanomas are supposed to be caused by the sun — and the Brits see precious little of that
Summer is a marvellous time. It’s when we can all enjoy light and warmth, eat gorgeous seasonal foods and get the chance to wear those colourful clothes we’ve collected during the rest of the year. And, of course, it’s also holiday time. All because of the sun, the glorious sun. No wonder the ancients worshiped sun-gods!
But in recent years our delight in the sun has been clouded by bullying health warnings. Repeatedly, we are told by the health czars to avoid the sun and never get a tan.
Health organisations that should know better, but rarely do, would have us shun the all-too-short glory of our summer days. Instead, we must cover our arms, wear hats and hide ourselves under a chemical burka of sun-cream.
Next, they’ll even be ordering us to shut our curtains during the hours of daylight! All this is because of fear of the dreaded big C: cancer.
As a result, the killjoys spread their terrifying message, and parents are made to feel unreasonably guilty if they as much as let their children out in the sun unprotected for a minute or two.
But if all this miserable propaganda has got you scared and worried, you shouldn’t be. Because the evidence is that the message promoted by the anti-sun brigade isn’t true. Indeed, the great sun scare that would drive us to live our summers in darkness is just a myth that’s grown from a bad piece of medical science. So it’s time to lay out the facts.
There’s no doubt that years of exposure to strong sun wrinkles the skin (as smoking did for the late novelist Beryl Bainbridge), because it loses its elasticity as fibres of collagen – the protein that supports the skin – link together. But the ultra-violet rays from the sun do not speed up true ageing, which is a completely different process caused by the loss of collagen over the years, which makes skin thinner and saggy.
This ageing loss occurs at the same rate of one per cent a year whether your skin is exposed to the sun or whether it isn’t. And it happens at the same rate for both men and women. The problem is that nature isn’t politically correct, and unfairly provides women with 15 per cent less skin collagen than men – the equivalent of 15 years worth of ageing! – so the effects are far more noticeable.
Of course we can live with wrinkles, but what about cancer? Fortunatately, the facts are absolutely clear – and they aren’t the ones used by doctors who create panic with the figure of 84,000 new cases of skin cancers a year in the UK.
What they don’t explain is that almost all of these so-called skin ‘cancers’ don’t spread or kill; in fact, they are not really cancers at all. Instead, these mild forms of skin cancer – what doctors call basal cell and squamous carcinomas – are benign tumours, something quite different.
Calling them ‘cancer’ was a wretched historical error and this incorrect name should be abandoned before more people are hurt by it. Not so fast, says the anti-sun brigade. There is another kind of cancer, malignant melanoma. And, true enough, that can be vicious: the smallest of black spots can spread and kill.
But don’t panic, that outcome is rare, and the melanoma scare is just as phony as the other sun-scare stories. According to the scaremongers, there has been a great increase in these ‘melanomas’ in recent years, supposedly caused by the sun.
The puzzle has been why this has not been accompanied by the expected increase in deaths from them. We now know the reason is that they aren’t really melanomas at all: it’s all a horrible mistake.
The mistake happened because sunlight makes moles grow, and in pale-skinned people this often gets mistaken for true melanoma. This kind of misdiagnosis, which began in sunny Australia, soon spread to feed the phony melanoma epidemic elsewhere.
And it continued because of fear of litigation if the real thing was missed in the doctor’s surgery, and because screening programmes artificially increase false-positive diagnoses.
The big mistake was that the idea that sun exposure causes melanoma went public before it was proved. (In fact, we don’t know what causes melanoma.) This erroneous idea was then supported by nonsense ‘research’ of the sort we read about daily: first we’re told standing on the left leg can lead to cancer of the right testicle, then it’s the right leg and left testicle; finally new studies show that it’s your partner’s leg, not yours.
And that story lasts for a few days when it is replaced by yet another study of whether red wine is good or bad for you. Such daily absurdities are typical products of ‘descriptive epidemiology’ – this is a bastard discipline that counts disease numbers, instead of studying the disease itself. (The problem is if you don’t understand that most of the tumours reported as ‘melanomas’ are not actually melanomas, then your numbers are deeply flawed.)
This type of numerical manipulation has single-handedly destroyed clinical science. It has made such a shambles of melanoma that every single one of its claims is suspect: it has not been shown that UV or sunburn is the cause, that children are more susceptible, or that sun beds are dangerous and sun-screens preventative.
But health advice often bears little relation to the truth, so off went the thoughtless warnings about sun avoidance, and watching for black spots that enlarge, darken, bleed or itch – a crazy idea because we all have spots that do just that without them being cancerous at all.
Anyway, as there’s no epidemic of deaths from skin cancer, the risk of spoiling your life by constant worry is far greater than the small chance of finding something that needs treatment. There are very good reasons to ignore these warnings.
Suntan is an evolutionary device: it protects against burning. The anti-solar brigade’s claim that it indicates skin damage is a measure of their biological naivety. A suntan is just a sign of increased pigment – melanin – in the skin and is a natural biological response to the sun, not a sign of skin damage.
So don’t keep yourself and your children out of the sun; far better to develop a healthy tan without burning. Sunshine is the dynamo for vitamin D production. Without it your bones will crack, as those practising sun avoidance have found.
Although the profound effect of sun on the immune system is a mystery, it is powerful enough to control many skin diseases. And there’s a new chapter in the cancer story, now that epidemiologists have done a UV–turn and claim that sun exposure actually protects against many cancers, including melanoma – a benefit they now say far outweighs the risks that they’d previously claimed!
Finally, there’s the happy effect of sun exposure on well-being; it makes you look good and feel good, an effect similar to anti-depressive treatment. What more can you want?
Having fun in the sun has been badly clouded by the pretence that sun exposure is a dangerous habit. It isn’t; solar cancer has been massively exaggerated and sun avoidance will break more bones than bad habits. So forget the dark stories and go out and enjoy the sun while it lasts – just don’t get burnt!
The UK maternity units in which only 1 in 10 mothers is of white British origin
Is England’s future English? Perhaps not
Just one in ten babies is born to a white British mother in some parts of the country, figures reveal.
The statistics – based on NHS monitoring of the ethnicity and nationality of patients – show a sharp contrast in the backgrounds of new mothers in urban and rural areas.
While white British mothers accounted for just 9.4 per cent of all births in one London health trust, the figure was 97.4 per cent of all births in Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust.
The birth statistics reflect how mothers described themselves, not the ethnicity of the fathers or the babies.
Across all of England’s 150 NHS Trusts there were 652,638 deliveries last year, around six out of ten of them to women who called themselves white British.
But in some trusts serving rural areas more than 95 per cent of mothers fell into that category. These included Northern Devon with 97.4 per cent, Co Durham and Darlington with 97.1, and Northumbria with 96 per cent.
At the other end of the spectrum, in North West London Hospitals NHS Trust, which covers Harrow, just 9.4 per cent of mothers were white British. Another inner city trust – Sandwell and West Birmingham – had 16.5 per cent. And a little over one in four new mothers were white Britons at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital in central London.
The proportion of mothers of white British origin at Bradford Teaching Hospitals trust was 34 per cent. Even some NHS trusts in the home counties reported fewer than six in ten deliveries were to white British mothers. In West Hertfordshire NHS Trust, which covers St Albans, just 57 per cent of women giving birth were white British.
Across England 62 per cent of all births last year involved a white British mother.
The largest other single ethnic groups were ‘other white’ – including Eastern Europeans – which made up 7 per cent of births, black (5 per cent), Pakistani (4 per cent) and Indian (3 per cent).
Of the rest of the mothers 8 per cent described their ethnicity as ‘other’ (including mixed-race women) and the remainder were listed as ‘not known’.
Backbench Tory MP Douglas Carswell said: ‘I think we have to face reality and that is if you continue to have mass immigration it’s going to have a very significant impact on the demography of our country – and it’s going to have a significant impact perhaps on the sort of country that we are.’
Last month it emerged that Britain’s population growth is outpacing every other country in Europe. Immigration and rising birth rates driven in part by the children of new arrivals – the so- called ‘immigrant baby boom’ – meant the UK gained more people than anywhere else in the continent.
Ministers have proposed forcing non EU migrants to buy their own private health care for non-emergency treatment on the NHS.
David Cameron has pledged to reduce the level of net migration – the number of people arriving minus the number leaving – from the hundreds to the tens of thousands. The Prime Minister has proposed putting a limit on the number of immigrants from outside the EU given work permits for the UK.
British welfare lunacy: 100,000 households on benefits higher than the average wage
Britain’s benefits bonanza has been laid bare as it emerged 100,000 households rake in more than the average wage in welfare every year. They collect £30,899 before tax, while many workers can only aspire to an average wage of £23,422. Meanwhile 50,000 of those households are entitled to more than £500 a week – which adds up to more than £26,000 a year.
Inmates are also using legal aid to fight disciplinary cases after they flout the rules in jail – by fighting other inmates, disobeying instructions or being caught with drugs or mobile phones.
While the cost of legal aid has been spiralling, the number of extra days added to a convict’s sentence has been falling – suggesting they are mounting a better defence.
In 2007, the number of punishments where additional days were added to a sentence was 13,460. By 2009 it was down to 11,550.
This compares with a legal aid bill of £12.49million in 2007, rising to £21.61million last year – or almost £2,500 every hour, according to figures slipped out before MPs left for the summer recess.
Officials at the Department for Work and Pensions highlighted the figures after the coalition pledged an overhaul of the welfare system to make work pay.
Employment Minister Chris Grayling said: ‘Yet again we see more evidence for why reform is so desperately needed.
‘When thousands of people are earning more on benefits than hard working families struggling to get by there must be something wrong and I’m shocked that this was allowed to happen.’
He insisted the Government’s paper published last week – 21st Century Welfare – would start changing the current system, which ‘punishes those who do the right thing by going out to work’.
Mr Grayling added: ‘We will make work pay so that the system is fair – fair for those who need a hand up and fair for the taxpayer who pays for it.’
The shocking scale of welfare dependency built up under Labour has seen almost 700,000 families pocketing more than £15,000 a year in benefits and nearly two million children living in households where not a single person works, the highest level in Europe.
At least 12million working-age households receive benefits each week, including tax credits and Child Benefit, at a cost of around £85billion per year.
Punitive marginal tax rates often mean people are better off staying on welfare than finding part-time work, as they can lose up to 96p in the pound for any additional income.
The Government has promised to reverse this, although the last Budget showed there would be an increase in the number caught out by the marginal tax rate.
David Cameron has said it is not sustainable to keep spending 14 per cent of national income on funding benefits.
Matthew Sinclair, research director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Hardworking taxpayers will be shocked to learn that tens of thousands of claimants are getting more than the average annual wage in benefits.
‘This is yet more confirmation that our disastrous welfare system is leaving too many people in a situation where there isn’t any real financial incentive to work.
‘We need to make drastic changes to save taxpayers’ money and ensure that it is worthwhile for people to take the opportunities that will be created as the economy recovers from the recession.
‘Most taxpayers are sick of seeing tens of billions of pounds of their money wasted every year on a welfare system that is trapping people in dependency.’
Housing benefit has also soared by 40 per cent to more than £14billion in the last decade.
To combat this Mr Cameron has pledged to clamp down on funding luxury houses in exclusive areas for families on welfare, with a cap of £400 a week for a four-bedroom house.
Critics argue this will force families on welfare out of their homes. But ministers claim those on benefits should not get special rights to live in expensive areas which many working households could not afford.
Revealed: The quarter of a million British homes where no one’s ever had a job
There are more than a quarter of a million homes in Britain where no one has ever had a job, according to shocking new Government figures.
They were unearthed as part of David Cameron’s campaign to find new ways of preventing the workshy living off benefits indefinitely, in some cases with a higher income than people with jobs.
The Prime Minister has ordered an investigation into the numbers of long-term out-of-work and claims that the benefits system makes it more profitable for some people to stay unemployed.
Experts say that children brought up in homes where neither the father nor the mother has had a job are far more likely to go straight from school to the dole queue and stay there.
Of the 264,000 homes where no one has ever had a job, most are made up of lone parents and single people, though a substantial number include two adults.
Employment Minister Chris Grayling said: ‘We have to tackle this problem now and make sure no one is ever left behind again.
These households make up some of the five million people who have just been cast aside on benefits with no meaningful attempt made to help them.
‘The Work Programme we are bringing forward will give all those who are out of work and need a job the right support at the right time to make sure they can access vacancies.’
There are about five million people on key out-of-work benefits, almost four times as many as those claiming the main dole – jobseeker’s allowance.
Ministers claim the root of the problem has more to do with the flawed welfare state than a lack of jobs. There were an estimated 486,000 unfilled posts in June, 10,000 up on March.
A Government source said: ‘Ministers are working on a new programme which will provide a single, unified approach to getting people back into work.’
In addition to the 1.4 million who claim the jobseeker’s allowance, 2.6 million get incapacity benefit or other employment benefits, 675,000 lone parents get income support and 600,000 claim other out-of-work benefits.
In total, 100,000 homes get more than the average wage in welfare.
Good High School exam results no guarantee of a university place in Britain
Students with good A-levels face being rejected from university this summer amid mounting competition for degree courses, the Government has admitted. David Willetts, the Universities Minister, warned that an increase in the number of undergraduate places in 2010 would not be enough to prevent many high-achieving students missing out altogether.
Just over a week before the publication of A-level results, Mr Willetts said more sixth-formers should consider re-sitting their exams or taking an apprenticeship as an alternative to university.
The comments come amid growing concerns over the pressure on higher education places this autumn. Figures show more than 660,000 people have applied for a university place – up almost 12 per cent on last year’s record-breaking figures.
Some 68,000 more applications have been made in 2010 as growing numbers of young people attempt to get into university instead of the workplace during the economic downturn. Competition is being swelled by some 45,000 people reapplying after being rejected in 2009.
Speaking on Sunday, Mr Willetts said the Coalition had made an extra 10,000 places available this year, meaning record numbers of people would start courses. But he warned: “It is going to be tough. There are young people who sadly are not going to get a place, including perhaps some people who really have got good A-level grades, and for them there is a whole range of options.”
In a sign of the competition for traditional university courses, Mr Willetts told the Andrew Marr show on BBC1 that more sixth-formers should consider college or apprenticeships as an alternative to higher education. “I think we should get away from the mindset that there is only one option, which is at the age of 18 going away from home to university for three years,” he said.
He added: “Obviously there is the opportunity of re-sitting their exams. They may wish to reapply next year, they may want to do things that increase the strength of their CV and make them stand out more to universities.
“There are other ways of getting training. They can go into work and try to get training through apprenticeships, with 50,000 extra apprenticeship places, [and] there are more places at further education colleges. “We are absolutely doing our best to increase the number of opportunities available for young people even in tough times.”
A-level results for students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be published on Thursday, August 19. Academics are already predicting another record round of results, with the proportion of A grades expected to top last year’s total of 26.7 per cent.
For the first time this year, an elite A* is being introduced following claims from universities that record rises in the number of A grades makes it increasingly hard to pick out the most exceptional candidates. Students must score more than 90 per cent in the second year of A-levels to achieve an A*.
But on Sunday the introduction of the new grade was surrounded in fresh controversy after independent schools accused the official qualifications watchdog of underestimating the number of students capable of achieving it.
Ofqual is using last year’s A-level results to predict the proportion of sixth-formers expected to gain an A* in each subject. They can order exam boards to cut the number of A*s if provisional results indicate that the proportion achieving it is at least two percentage points above the targets.
But Geoff Lucas, secretary of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, which represents top private schools, said the system failed to take account of the fact that pupils were “more motivated” because of the presence of the top grade this year.
“When we asked Ofqual if they had taken this extra motivation of wanting to win an A* into account, they said they had not,” he said. “We are worried that this could lead to widespread injustice.”
An Ofqual spokeswoman said: “If candidates are motivated to perform at a higher level this year than candidates were last year, then this year’s candidates should get higher marks to reflect their higher achievement. “The reference points which the regulators and the awarding organisations used to help inform the awarding of the A* grade this year used modelling work based on A-level outcomes in 2009.
“However, these were no more than starting-points for discussions between the regulators and the awarding organisations to make sure that where marks were higher or lower than the reference-points, there were sound reasons for that.”
Eye on Britain (2) 