Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffAll food allergies are caused by an immune system malfunction. Your immune system mistakenly identifies certain egg proteins as harmful, triggering the production of immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies to neutralize the protein (allergen). The next time you come in contact with these proteins, these IgE antibodies recognize them and signal your immune system to release histamine and other chemicals. Histamine and other body chemicals cause a range of allergic signs and symptoms. Histamine is partly responsible for most allergic responses, including runny nose, itchy eyes, dry throat, rashes, hives, nausea, diarrhea, labored breathing and anaphylactic shock.
Both egg yolks and egg whites contain a number of proteins that can cause allergies, but allergy to egg white is more common. It's possible for breast-fed infants to have an allergic reaction to egg proteins in breast milk.
- Food allergy: An overview. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/foodAllergy/PDF/foodallergy.pdf. Accessed July 12, 2009.
- Kurowski K, et al. Food allergies: Detection and management. American Family Physician. 2008;77:1678.
- Lack G. Food allergy. New England Journal of Medicine. 2008;359:1252.
- Anaphylaxis. Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. http://www.aafa.org/print.cfm?id=9&sub=23&cont=324. Accessed July 16, 2009.
- Chapman JA, et al. Food allergy: A practice parameter. Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. 2006;96:S1.
- Sicherer SH. Food allergen avoidance. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed May 22, 2009.
- Egg allergy. Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. http://www.aafa.org/print.cfm?id=9&sub=20&cont=523. Accessed July 16, 2009.
- Flu vaccine and egg allergy. American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. http://www.acaai.org/public/advice/Fluvaccine_eggallergy.htm. Accessed July 16, 2009.
