Serum Sickness as a Clinical Model for Food Intolerance

Abstract

Many people, as much as 40% of the population, have symptoms which they attribute to eating specific foods [1]. Testing for specific IgE to foods in a majority of these patients is negative and they are classed among the food intolerant. The clinical model most often cited for food intolerance is the patient with a lactase deficiency who develops abdominal distress including bloating, flatulence and crampy diarrhea after consuming milk. But most patients with food intolerance do not have primarily gastrointestinal problems after consuming their problem food. Rather they complain of joint stiffness and soreness, migraine headaches, exacerbation of asthma, fatigue, malaise, nasal and sinus congestion, rashes and cardiac arrhythmias. They complain of symptoms, which are more likely, the result of circulating immune complexes.