Milk, Egg Allergies "Worse Than 20 Years Ago"

A major study of children with milk allergies was published in the November 2007 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (November 2007, Volume 120, Issue 5, Pages 1172-1177), "The natural history of IgE-mediated cow's milk allergy" by J.M. Skripak, E.C. Matsui, K. Mudd and R.A. Wood. I wrote about it in the post Milk Allergies May Last For Years.

A follow-up to that study, concentrating on egg allergies, was just published in the December 2007 issue of that journal. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (December 2007, Volume 120, Issue 6, Pages 1413-1417), "The natural history of egg allergy" by J.H. Savage, E.C. Matsui, J.M. Skripak and R.A. Wood.

Lead investigator Robert Wood said that the twin studies showed that allergies are indeed worse than they were even as recently as the 1980s.

"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.

"Not only do more kids have allergies, but fewer of them outgrow their allergies, and those who do, do so later than before."

Based on this trend, allergies are predicted to become even more severe and long-lasting in the future.

"We may be dealing with a different kind of disease process than we did 20 years ago," says Wood.

"Why this is happening we just don't know."

Individual cases, however, appear to be less predictable in their outcomes, as well as more aggressive.

A summary of the findings can be found in an article on Nursing in Practice.