what are the symptoms of a citrus allergy

I recently started having this same issue and as best I can tell I have to stop eating or drinking all citrus fruits.  I found that eating the fruit was worse then drinking, just because of the mix of added ingrediants, but still... the puffy, sore, lip thing is making me insane!  I used a benadryl cream to help with the pain and itch as well.  If you find anything else, please post.

I don't know how old these posts are... but my son has the same thing. It's not a true allergy, but is a sensitivity... to citrus. His lips start with a dark line around the outside, and then swell, itch, split, and scab over. His lips normally take over a month (sometimes 2 months) to heal from touching an orange/lemon/lime/pineapple/etc just one time to his lips.

We were given Prednisone to try, since benedryl does absolutely nothing. (Since it's not an allergy.)

If he eats citrus and doesn't realize it, he gets a dark ring around his lips. He takes a pill, and it cuts his healing time down to a week or two depending on when it was caught. He can still eat citrus as long as he can get it past his lips, and doesn't touch his lips with his tongue afterwards. He LOVES those fruits, and sometimes eats them (VERY CAREFULLY) knowing that if he gets a dab on his lips, he has the Prednisone as backup. He only takes 1-15 per year because he avoids them more often than not, and he's very careful when he does eat them.

I know how frustrated I was trying to find out how to help him, so even if these questions are several years old, I hope this will help someone out there with the same problem.

Cathy