Science

Elizabeth Jensen, an associate professor of epidemiology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and her colleagues have found that having been breastfed — which, along with its other benefits, is thought to cultivate a healthier microbial garden in the infant gut — is protective against the disease, for example, but so far only in children with certain gene variants suspected of making the esophageal barrier more permeable.

Conversely, antibiotics taken early in life are associated with an increased risk of EoE later, according to Jensen’s research (a pattern also observed in studies of those with asthma, pediatric-onset inflammatory bowel disease and pediatric autoimmune arthritis).

Now that I knew what ailed me, and had a treatment regimen that was at least controlling the problem, I saw disparate-seeming episodes that had distressed me going back decades in a new light: a painful lump in my throat in my 20s that I attributed to stress; an occasional sensation of breathlessness, also in my 20s, that I thought was allergies.

It might be that any irritation in the esophagus, whether from an upward surge of acid or inflammation spurred by a food allergy, could be interpreted as originating in the lungs — or even the heart — and a body might respond, as mine apparently did, with the panic of someone who’s drowning.

A few years ago, Rima Rachid, the director of the Allergen Immunotherapy Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and her colleagues gave 10 adult volunteers with peanut allergies microbes from nonallergic donors.

Saved 94% of original text.