The JHU Gazette reports that milk and egg allergies, once considered temporary childhood conditions, are now more persistent and harder to outgrow.
New research suggests that milk allergy and egg allergy cases typically continue well into school years and beyond.
The findings show that 20% of studied children outgrew milk allergy by the age of 4; 42% outgrew it by the age of 8; and 95% outgrew it by the age of 16.
For egg allergy, only 4% outgrew the allergy by the age of 4; 37% by the age of 10; and 68% by the age of 16.
‘The bad news is that the prognosis for a child with a milk or egg allergy appears to be worse than it was 20 years ago,’ says lead investigator Robert Wood of Johns Hopkins Children's Center. ‘Not only do more kids have allergies, but fewer of them outgrow their allergies, and those who do, do so later than before. We may be dealing with a different kind of disease process than we did 20 years ago. Why this is happening, we just don't know.’
The study also found that a child's blood levels of milk and egg antibodies (the immune chemicals produced in response to allergens) were reliable predictors of the disease's progression: The higher the level of antibodies, the less likely it was that a child would outgrow the allergy anytime soon.