Posted at: 07/21/2009 7:27 PM
By: Axel Gumbel

Diagnosing and Treating Allergies

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- Stomach pain, nausea, heartburn, trouble swallowing: those are common symptoms that prompt many people to head to the doctor's office.

But it's not always easy for doctors to find out what's causing them.

Dr. James Lee says some food allergies can be tricky to diagnose.

For example, it's easy to tell if someone's allergic to peanuts because they can immediately get hives and have difficulty breathing.

But another type of food allergy does not come on as spontaneously.

This is the case with a condition called Eosinophilic Esophagitis.

That's because there's not been a reliable test to confirm the presence of the specific cells involved.

But now, Dr. James Lee and his research team at Mayo Clinic have developed a new way to aid diagnosing such cases.

Eosinophils are a type of white blood cell.

These cells increase in number during many allergic reactions, but they can be hard to see.

That's because when these cells are active, they can break apart.

Traditional methods of detecting the Eosinophils in that state are not very effective.

Dr. Lee and his team have created a new way to stain tissue samples with a special antibody.

This method singles out Eosinophils, so that they're recognizable from other cells in the tissue sample.

Researcher Cheryl Protheroe says this new method is a tool to help doctors make more accurate diagnoses, so patients can get on the right treatment.