my niece is allergic to eggs, but not to stuf with eggs cooked in them (such as bread, cake, cookies, french toast, etc.). but why? is there a certain chemical in eggs that some people are allergic to that gets made into some kind of compound that doesn’t affect them? my grandma said my uncle was allergic to eggs when he was little too. is this a common baby thing? i know some babies are lactose intolerant but then outgrow it. will they outgrow this too? when?
Allergies are responses to certain proteins, chemicals whose structure are critical to their chemical functioning. Cooking completely alters the structure of the proteins that makes up eggs (a process called denaturing), and therefore alters our body’s reponse to them.
But it’s not like gm3’s niece tried eating raw eggs, is it?
Whether fried, poached, hard-boiled, or baked in an angel food cake, aren’t the protein allergins being denatured?
Yep. It’s the heat that does it, by breaking the weak hydrogen bonds that hold a protein in it’s particular shape. It doesn’t matter a bit what form the heat takes. Depending on which protein is responsible, less-than-thorough cooking may elicit a response.
but plain cooked eggs (scrambled, boiled) break her out too.
Have your sister or brother (the niece’s parent) ask the doctor what the heck is up with this.
If the parents haven’t been told exactly what she is allergic to, how can they prevent her from eating that?
My sister doesn’t like to eat breakfast egg dishes (scrambled, boiled) but she’s okay with quiche and custards. It could be, in the sister’s case, a sensitivity.
Maybe its psychological.
Both of these methods of cooking can (some would say should!) leave some of the egg undercooked. Perhaps that’s why they affect your niece?
Julie
From this page:
As an aside, they talk of MMR injections cultured from eggs, but I’ve been told by my doctor that 'flu injections are to. One of the first questions I’m always asked is whether I have an egg allergy (in my case, no.)
I don’t know if it’s common, but a former girlfriend of mine is severely allergic to eggs. She used to only react when ingesting a relatively large quantity of eggs (say a whole egg), and the consequences were (relatively) mild. But once, she had a much more serious allergic reaction and ended up in the hospital for a week or so. Since then, she became more and more allergic to anything which included eggs, even traces of them (and mind you, there’s a lot of foodstuff which contain eggs). So, though, I’m absolutely not qualified to answer medical questions, I would suspect that your niece could outgrown this allergy, as some kids do when they grow up, or, like in my girlfriend’s case, it could become worst with time (it became only really a serious issue when she was in her 20’s).
As someone already told you, her parents should point out this allergy if their daughter has to receive shots. Many vaccines are cultivated in eggs, and in my girlfriend case (which allegedly is much more severe than in your niece case, but it costs nothing to tell the MD about it anyway), she’s been told not to be shot at least twice (but I can’t remember which vaccines were potentially harmful to her)
I’m not sure if I’m technically allergic…but whenever I eat an egg (scrambled, boiled, etc) I get REALLY ill to my stomach. But when they’re mixed into a cake mix or some other mix, I’m perfectly fine. I always found that odd, especially since I make sure the eggs are cooked well.