NUGGETS OF WISDOM: Can you outgrow your food allergies?

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NUGGETS OF WISDOM Can you outgrow your food allergies

Nearly two of every 10 children can be allergic to milk–young tummies find it tough to handle chunks of formula-milk protein, especially if they weren’t made tough by breastfeeding for at least six months.

While dairy ads keep on pounding into buyers’ heads, “You never outgrow your need for milk,” it turns out that buyers can’t buy that–some children with milk allergies can’t outgrow such allergies.

Along with egg allergies, allergic reactions to milk have gone from bad to worse in the last 20 years, researchers found out.

Virtually unheard of except for rare cases hereabouts, milk and egg allergies are the two most common food allergies in the United States, affecting three and two percent of children, respectively.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center kept track of more than 800 patients with milk allergy and nearly 900 with egg allergy over 13 years–and found that most of these allergies persist well into the school years and beyond.

Researchers noted that relatively more severe cases end up at Hopkins Children’s, but claimed there is a trend toward more severe, more persistent allergies.

The findings also give credence to what pediatricians have suspected for some time: the more recent cases of food allergies, for still-unknown reasons, behave more unpredictably and more aggressively than cases diagnosed in the past.

Earlier studies had it that 75 percent of children with milk allergy outgrew their condition by age three–recent findings show just 20 percent of children in their studies outgrew their allergy by age four, and only 42 percent outgrew it by age eight. By age 16, nearly four of every five were allergy-free.

Among egg-allergic children, “four percent outgrew this allergy by age four, 37 percent by age 10, and 68 percent by age 16.”

Findings show that a child’s blood levels of milk and egg antibodies–the so-called immunoglobulin E (IgE), immune chemical response to allergens– were a reliable predictor of disease behavior. The higher the IgE level, the less likely it was that a child would outgrow the allergy any time soon.

In an experimental study at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and Duke University, it was found that placing small amounts of milk protein under the tongues of children who are allergic to milk can help them overcome their allergies. Called SLIT (sublingual immune therapy), the tack involves giving children small but increasingly higher doses of the food they are allergic to until their immune systems “learn” to tolerate the food without triggering an allergic reaction or triggering only mild symptoms.

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