UVA Health working to diagnose rare allergy condition

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - UVA Health is helping to bring attention to a rare allergy condition that is being diagnosed more frequently.

“We are seeing this skyrocketing, and we think of it oftentimes as kind of the latest wave of the allergy epidemics,” said UVA Health allergist, Dr. Emily McGowan.

Eosinophilic esophagitis, or EoE, is a condition more people are getting diagnosed with each year.

“It’s an allergic condition that primarily affects the esophagus or the throat,” McGowan said. “It’s mostly driven by allergens, either foods that we ingest, or things that we breathe in, through the air.”

According to McGowan, doctors are getting better at diagnosing the rare condition. Current data shows it affects about 50 in 100,000 people.

“We have a lot of emerging data to show that it may actually be very under-diagnosed,” McGowan said. “And once we start to identify all the patients out there who may have it, I think that number is probably going to go up.”

McGowan says now it is all about figuring out why there is an increase in people having EoE.

“And we don’t have a great answer for that yet,” McGowan said. “But something seems to have changed within our system, within our environment, really, within the past couple of decades that we hope are going to be able to identify in the in the future.”

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