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(Ivanhoe Newswire) In a study at the Johns Hopkins Childrens 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.
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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
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