BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Allergy
Sec. Food Allergy
This article is part of the Research TopicShellfish Allergy: Diagnostics and ManagementView all 5 articles
Quality of Life is Impaired in Shrimp Allergic Adults and Caregivers
Provisionally accepted
Melissa L Hearrell1
Sara Anvari1
R. Sharon Chinthrajah2
Sana Hasan1
David P Huston3
Edwin Kim4Evan Li1
Chen-Hsing Lin5
Andreas L. Lopata6
Sarbjit Saini7
Sayantani B Sindher2
Panida Sriaroon8
Bin Brenda Su1
Julie Wang9
Carla M Davis1,10*- 1Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, United States
- 2Stanford University, Stanford, United States
- 3Texas A & M, Houston, United States
- 4Univesrity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC, United States
- 5Texas A&M, Houston, United States
- 6Australian Institute of Tropical Health & Medicine, Townsville, Australia
- 7Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, United States
- 8University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, Tampa, United States
- 9Mt Sinai School of Medicine, New York NY, United States
- 10Howard University, Washington, DC, United States
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Shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) allergies (SA) can result in allergic reactions ranging from life threatening severe anaphylaxis to oral allergy syndrome. SA may pose lifestyle restrictions on daily life and interfere with social relationships and school performance, but this has not been thoroughly investigated. We examined the QoL in SA adults and caregivers. Methods: A QoL online questionnaire adapted from the validated Food Allergy Quality of Life Questionnaire (FAQLQ) was administered between September 30,2023–July 15,2024 to adults and caregivers of at least one SA child. Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon rank sum test, and Fisher exact test were used to determine QoL and desire for treatment in SA subjects. Comparisons were made between SA adults with and without children with SA. Results: Eighty-six participants completed the survey. Sixty-four (74%) SA adults did not have SA children, and 6 (7%) were SA adults with SA children. Eighty-one percent of SA adults found SA at least moderately to extremely troublesome, and 83% felt other people underestimated problems caused by SA. Seventy percent of SA adults were interested/very interested in a treatment and, of those interested, 47% wanted treatment to enable eating a serving size of shrimp. The small cohort of SA adults with a SA child may have been more likely to have concerns about allergic reaction compared to SA adults without a SA child. (OR 4.4 [CI 1-21]) Conclusions: SA adults report impaired QoL and a desire for treatment to eat a serving size of shrimp. The majority of SA people have impaired QoL.
Keywords: shrimp, Shrimp allergy, Quality of Life, Seafood, food allergy, Food allergy (FA), Survey, Anaphylaxis
Received: 03 May 2025; Accepted: 30 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hearrell, Anvari, Chinthrajah, Hasan, Huston, Kim, Li, Lin, Lopata, Saini, Sindher, Sriaroon, Su, Wang and Davis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Carla M Davis
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