TOPLINE

Pediatric patients who started omalizumab for food allergy were more likely to have private insurance, be White, experience severe allergic reactions, and have multiple food allergies than pediatric patients in the general food allergy clinic population.

METHODOLOGY

• Researchers conducted a retrospective chart review of 56 pediatric patients (mean age, 9.6 years; 35.7% female) who started omalizumab for food allergy at an urban clinic from 2024 to 2025.
• Demographic and medical characteristics, including race, ethnicity, age, insurance type, number of food allergies, and history of anaphylaxis, were recorded from patient charts.
• Patients with food allergy starting omalizumab were compared with 3112 patients with food allergy seen at the same clinic during the same period to assess demographic differences.
• Before the study period, all providers seeing patients with food allergy within the clinic attended an educational presentation reviewing newly published eligibility criteria for initiating omalizumab for food allergy.

TAKEAWAY

• Patients who started omalizumab were more likely to be White (69.6% vs 26.0%) and less likely to be Black (8.9% vs 37.8%; P < .001 for both) than patients in the overall food allergy clinic population.
• Patients initiating omalizumab treatment were less likely to identify as Hispanic than patients in the general food allergy clinic population (7.1% vs 20.0%; P < .05).
• Patients who started omalizumab were more likely to have private insurance than patients in the overall food allergy clinic population (89.3% vs 55.3%; P < .001).
• Most patients who initiated omalizumab had more than one food allergy (91.1%) and a documented history of anaphylaxis (73.2%).

IN PRACTICE

“A better understanding of factors related to omalizumab adoption could be used to inform equitable implementation and dissemination of treatment,” the authors wrote.

SOURCE

Tiffany Kichline, PhD, with the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, was the corresponding author of the study, which was published online on July 21 in Pediatric Allergy and Immunology.

LIMITATIONS

Researchers conducted this study during the first year following FDA approval of omalizumab for food allergy; therefore, uptake patterns may evolve over time. The clinical profile of the overall food allergy clinic comparison group was not fully characterized.

DISCLOSURES

No source of funding was reported for this study, and the authors reported having no conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.