A Reaction or Just a Rash?

It's a common scenario: Your child is ill with a cough, runny nose and a fever. You go to the doctor and what do you know---there is an ear infection too. So you start on the Amoxicillin and are well on your way to feeling better. Things start looking up, but a few days into the treatment a rash develops. It's Saturday night, of course, and you call the office to talk to the on-call doctor. They tell you to stop the Amoxicillin and they'll call in a non-Penicillin antibiotic. Now your child is labeled "Allergic to Penicillin" forever. Yuck.

A new study found that perhaps the penicillin allergy might not be so straightforward. A group in Switzerland looked at 88 children who developed a rash after being on an antibiotic. A few months later they tested them for allergies to these antibiotics. Only 12% had positive skin tests, and only 7% developed a rash when taking the antibiotic again. However 2/3 tested positive for a virus, which likely caused the cough, runny nose...AND the rash. The antibiotic was likely a red herring.

So what does this mean for you? If your child has been labeled penicillin allergic based only on a rash (no breathing problems, hives, swelling or other symptoms) it may be worth doing a medically supervised oral challenge test to see if the rash really equalled an allergy.