Conference Coverage

Step-up diet: Less-intensive way to ID eosinophilic esophagitis food triggers?


 

EXPERT ANALYSIS FROM DIGESTIVE DISEASES: NEW ADVANCES

– While traditional elimination diets for eosinophilic esophagitis are highly restrictive and endoscopically intensive, a new “step-up” approach may offer a superior empiric scheme for identifying food triggers, according to Stuart J. Spechler, MD.

The recently described step-up approach may be preferable to the standard empiric six-food elimination diet, which has a 72% success rate but is challenging to implement, according to Dr. Spechler, chief of the division of gastroenterology, Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.

Dr. Stuart J. Spechler of Baylor University, Dallas Andrew D. Bowser/MDedge News

Dr. Stuart J. Spechler

In the standard elimination diet, the most common food allergens (milk, wheat, eggs, soy, nuts, seafood) are removed, and then reintroduced one at a time over 6 weeks, with symptom response assessment and repeat endoscopy after each introduction.

“That’s an extremely demanding, time-consuming, inconvenient, and expensive thing to do. It requires at least seven endoscopies, probably more, performed over a period of 42 weeks,” Dr. Spechler said here at Digestive Diseases: New Advances, jointly provided by Rutgers and Global Academy for Medical Education.

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