Background

Over many years in paediatric allergology we (SL and TF) have observed a higher incidence of allergy in the children with epilepsy and their immediate families than in the controls and their families.1 It has nevertheless proved impossible to demonstrate a strict correlation between allergy and epilepsy, and most of the reports are anecdotal and open to any and every aetiological hypothesis.2 Interest in food allergy as a cause or aggravating factor of epilepsy was reawakened by Egger, whose studies on children suffering from migraine and/or hyperactive syndrome reported an improvement in the convulsive symptomatology subsequent to an oligoantigenic diet.3 Rolandic epilepsy is the best known and described form of idiopathic epilepsy and unquestionably the …