Pediatric Allergy & Immunology

The Division of Allergy and Immunology at Lurie Children’s treats more children for allergies and asthma than any other hospital in Illinois. Our allergists and immunologists are leaders in their field, having worked with national organizations to improve the understanding and care of food allergies, pediatric asthma, and immune deficiencies.

Our food allergy team performs cutting-edge food allergy diagnoses and treatment. The state-of-the-art Oral Food Challenge (OFC) / Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) Unit at Lurie Children’s Hospital opened in January 2021. This unit is used for patients being seen for oral food challenges or oral immunotherapy visits only, allowing the physicians, advanced nurse practitioners and nurses to dedicate their full attention to the patients. Our specialists perform 350 or more oral food challenges each year, far more than most other pediatric hospitals. 

We also have a program where we treat food allergies in infants, as well as promote early introduction of peanut in children at risk to prevent the development of peanut allergy. This includes both clinical visits as well as the opportunities to participate in research.

Our doctors also work with gastroenterologists to provide multidisciplinary care for eosinophilic gastrointestinal diseases.

Our division has been involved in NIH-funded research in urban populations, and research in severe asthma for more than 30 years. We currently have studies looking at novel treatments for severe asthma, treating asthma in urban children with recurrent asthma flares, understanding the different types of asthma, and studies looking at the prevention of asthma in at-risk children. We have an active clinical program providing guidelines-based care, as well with state-of-the-art treatment, and use of novel biologic therapies for controlling asthma in our patients. Our division also partners in the high risk asthma clinic for patients along with pulmonary medicine.

Lurie Children’s has the most comprehensive program in the Chicago area to evaluate primary immune deficiencies. Our program is one of 125 globally recognized Jeffrey Modell Diagnostic Centers for Primary Immune Deficiencies, that is dedicated to improving the awareness, early detection and treatment of these serious conditions.

Lurie Children’s also provides comprehensive treatment to patients with immune deficiencies with outpatient treatments in the Ambulatory Infusion Center or definitive therapy via stem cell transplantation. Lurie Children’s has a Severe Immunodeficiency Stem Cell Transplant Program made up of physicians and nurse practitioners from the stem cell transplantation and allergy and immunology specialties. This program is part of the Primary Immune Deficiency Transplant Consortium, a research consortium that evaluates the most effective methods to treat primary immunodeficiency diseases through transplantation, gene therapy or enzyme replacement.

Although most of these diseases are rare, our primary immune deficiencies team cares for 340 patients annually. Because these conditions are often inherited, our team provides genetic screening of patients’ close family members and works with genetics experts at Lurie Children’s to provide genetic counseling.