A Strike against deadly allergies

Print

A strike against deadly allergies   (link)

 
Waterloo Region Record

Sabrina Shannon was 13 years old when she ate her last meal in the cafeteria of Bishop Smith Catholic High School in Pembroke, Ontario.

Sabrina had a life-threatening allergy to soy, peanuts and dairy. She carried medication and was careful to ask questions before eating anything not made at home. She had tried the French fries served in the school cafeteria before with no problems.

But this time, the tongs used to serve the fries had also touched poutine, which includes cheese curds with the fries. That mistake had dreadful consequences. Sabrina started wheezing in class after lunch. Teachers rushed to help her, but it was too late. She collapsed and went into cardiac arrest before the ambulance arrived. She died the following day: Sept. 30, 2003.

Her iconic, tragic story inspired "Sabrina's Law," a legal requirement that school staff in Ontario be trained in delivering medication to people with life-threatening allergies. It also serves as a stark reminder of the perilous, precarious existence of thousands of Canadians who have deadly allergies. One moment of inattention or misunderstanding can cost a life.

If only Sabrina, and the dozens of Canadians who have died since as a result of food allergies, had lived to hear the news of a wonderful new device being developed at University of Guelph.

Suresh Neethirajan and associates at the BioNano lab have created a tool that uses nanotechnology to detect minute amounts of allergens in food. This device, about the size of a cell phone, can be used by an inspector at a processing plant or a customer at a restaurant. A small sample of the food is mixed with water and injected into a silicon-based plate. The plate is treated to detect allergens like peanuts and gluten in very low concentrations — think of a couple of drops of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Instead of an analysis done in a lab that takes two or three days, this invention requires just two or three minutes for the results to be sent to a smartphone app. 

In a disturbing trend that scientists don't quite understand, medical emergencies involving life-threatening allergies have increased dramatically over the years. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Statistics, the number of emergency room visits for this situation was 6,035 in 2013-14 in Ontario and Alberta. That's more than double what it was seven years earlier. Most people survive, but about a dozen times a year across the country, they die. We owe a vote of thanks to Neethirajan and colleagues for their work ensuring that the odds for these uniquely vulnerable people will soon be far better.