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Eliminating Milk Allergies Does a Body Good
Reported August 21, 2009
(Ivanhoe Newswire) – In a study at the Johns Hopkins Children’s
Center, children who were severely allergic to milk were given increasingly
higher doses of milk over time. This continuous exposure to milk allergens
gradually retrained their immune systems to tolerate the very food that once
sent their systems into overdrive.
Three million U.S. children have food allergies, according to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, and milk allergy is the most common
type.
The follow-up of 18 children ages 6 to 16, whose severe milk allergies had
eased or disappeared, found that all children were able to safely consume
milk at home and that reactions, while common, were generally mild and grew
progressively milder over time. The follow-up varied from three to 17
months, depending on how long it took patients to increase their milk
intake.
These findings also suggest that regular use of milk and dairy foods may be
needed for children to maintain their tolerance.
"We now have evidence from other studies that some children once
successfully treated remain allergy-free even without daily exposure, while
in others the allergies return once they stop regular daily exposure to
milk," Robert Wood, M.D., the study's senior investigator and director of
Allergy & Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center was quoted as
saying. "This may mean that some patients are truly cured of their allergy,
while in others the immune system adapts to regular daily exposure to milk
and may, in fact, need the exposure to continue to tolerate it."
After up to 17 months of at-home consumption, 13 of the 18 children who
could tolerate increasingly higher doses were asked to return to the clinic
for milk-drinking tests. Of the 13, six showed no reaction after drinking 16
ounces of milk, twice the highest dose tolerated during the initial study.
Seven children had reactions at doses ranging from three to 16 ounces. The
reactions ranged from oral itch to hives to sneezing to mild abdominal pain,
but none was serious. One child developed a cough requiring medications.
Investigators also continued to follow three children who could not tolerate
doses higher than 2.5 ounces, which made them ineligible to continue the
at-home part of the study. All three continued to drink milk daily with
minimal reactions, and two of the children were eventually able to increase
their consumption beyond 2.5 ounces.
Children and their parents kept daily logs of milk and dairy consumption and
recorded symptoms, such as hives, abdominal pain, sneezing and cough. During
the first three months, consumption of milk triggered reactions 49 percent
of the time. The figure dropped to 23 percent in the subsequent three
months, and some children had no reactions at all.
SOURCE: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, August 10, 2009 |
