Share of clinic patients allergic to each food, by world region, 2025
How often allergists in 50 countries report each of eight specific food allergens, plus a summary column for patients allergic to multiple foods.
Source: Arasi S et al., World Allergy Organization Journal 2025;18:101123
Share of clinic patients allergic to each food, by world region, 2025
Mean share of patients reported allergic to each food, across 157 specialist allergy clinics in 14 UN macro-regions. Each clinic counts equally regardless of patient throughput or age mix.
Each cell is the patient share at responding allergy centres, averaged per region, not the regional population. The responding clinics are specialist allergy centres that mostly see referred and severe cases, not a cross-section of the population. n is how many centres responded per region (157 total across 50 countries). Each region averages across many countries. Methods vary: molecular diagnostics and oral food challenges are common in Europe and Oceania; elsewhere most centres rely on skin prick tests and specific IgE blood tests. Some regional gaps are diagnostic, not biological. Multiple food allergy was asked as a separate centre-level question, not summed from the specific allergens. Pru p 3 is a peach protein, almost exclusively Mediterranean, the marker for severe peach allergy.
How the chart is organised
Rows are 14 world regions, sorted top to bottom by mean prevalence across the eight specific allergens (Milk, Egg, Peanut, Fish, Hazelnut, Wheat, Peach, Pru p 3). Southern Africa sits at the top with the highest average; Southern Asia is at the bottom with the lowest. Multiple food allergy is deliberately excluded from this ranking because it is a meta-indicator (patients allergic to more than one food) rather than a specific allergen.
Columns are the eight specific allergens, ordered left to right by their global mean prevalence (Milk highest, Pru p 3 lowest). The right-most column shows Multiple food allergy, separated from the specific allergens by a dashed vertical line because it answers a different question — how often is a patient allergic to several foods at once? rather than how often is a specific food the trigger?
Colour runs from pale yellow at 0% to deep red around the chart's maximum (~56%). The same ramp covers every cell, so a value is directly comparable across rows, across columns, and across the dashed separator. Cell labels show the underlying percentage.
Attribution
Source: Arasi S, Morais-Almeida M, Martin BL, et al. Food allergy severity across the world: A World Allergy Organization international survey. World Allergy Organization Journal 2025;18:101123. doi:10.1016/j.waojou.2025.101123. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Chart rebuilt from Fig 2 of the original article; underlying values are reproduced verbatim from the data table beneath that figure.