Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Food allergy is one of the most important among other allergic diseases. Although it is less prevalent in adult but in infants it’s prevalence was reported as much as 8 percent. In part, wheat is one of the six main food allergens in infant and in other part there is extensive cross reactivity between the cereals. Therefore the aim of this study is selection of the best food substitute for wheat among other cereals. Materials and Methods: 24 patients with definitive diagnosis of type one hypersensitivity reaction to wheat were entered in this study. Skin prick test and serum specific IgE (Eliza) with 6 members of cereals family (wheat, barley, oat, Rye-Rice & Corn) were performed for them and open food challenge test was also done with three more available of the cereals (corn, Rice, barley) in our food culture and so comparison between allergenicity of wheat flour and wheat bran with skin prick test were done.

Results: The Skin prick tests (SPTs) were positive in 66.7 percent for Barley, 100 percent for wheat bran and 80-100 percent for other cereals. The results of specific IgE for wheat, Barley were positive in 94.5 percent, 68 percent, 39 percent of patients respectively and the results for other cereals were positive in less than 11 percent of cases. The results of food challenge test, for barley were positive in 60 percent of cases and for Rice and Corn were negative in all cases.

Conclusion: In the base of food challenge test as the gold standard test, the best food substitute for wheat sensitive patient between other cereals, were Corn and Rice respectively. It is important to emphasis that will be needed to perform oral food challenge in hospital with complete emergency equipment before introducing any other cereals as food substitute for wheat, specially Barley.