Milk Allergy More Persistent Disease Now

In retrospect, Tanner's persistent rash and eczema flare-ups were obviously the symptoms of his milk allergy. We are lucky... he is among the 19% who outgrew a milk allergy by age 4. Yesterday's Health feature on CNN.com made me realize how lucky we are! It depicts the frustrations of parents of milk-allergic children. A new study in the November issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology shows that it takes longer for children to outgrow a milk allergy than what was previously believed.

Many allergists tell parents of babies who are allergic to milk that it is likely that they will outgrow it by the time they are four or at least before they start school. But Dr. Robert Wood, the chief of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at Johns Hopkins, co-author of Food Allergies for Dummies and co-author of the study says that their findings are contrary to previous research. With 807 patients, this is the largest group of milk-allergic children studied to date and the results showed that 1 in 5 kids did not outgrow their milk allergy by age 16. It also noted that milk is the most common of food allergies, affecting 2-3 percent of the food-allergic population.

I've often said that the kids who are anaphylactic to milk are much more challenged that those with allergies to nuts, just because the prevalence of dairy products is much higher. Think of the times that kids carry dripping ice cream cones on the playground! From the CNN article:

"One of the huge frustrations for parents of milk-allergic children is that they will typically find that someone with peanut allergy gets lots of respect and lots of precautions taken and the same respect is almost impossible to get for milk allergy," Wood says. Examples of precautions are cleaning school lunch tables well or placing children with peanut butter at a separate table. "Whatever precautions need to be in place for something like peanut allergy, need to be in place for milk allergy as well," says Wood.