Research from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, Maryland suggests that childhood allergies to milk and eggs are becoming harder to outgrow.
An allergy to milk is the most common allergy seen in children — between two and three percent of all young children are affected. Egg allergy is the second most common allergy seen in children, affecting between one and two percent of the young child population.
Research from just twenty years ago suggested that three-quarters of children would outgrow milk and egg allergies by the age of three. I should mention that I had a milk allergy when I was a baby… I’ll have to ask my mom when I started being able to drink regular milk.
Now, it seems that milk and egg allergies are persisting into late childhood and early adolescence. Fewer children are outgrowing allergies at all; those who do outgrow the allergies tend to do it later.
The Johns Hopkins Children’s Center staff examined thirteen years worth of medical records for nearly two thousand children — around eight hundred with milk allergies and around nine hundred with egg allergies.
In children with milk allergies:
- By age four, less than one-fifth of children had outgrown the allergy.
- By age eight, approximately two-fifths of children had outgrown the allergy.
- By age sixteen, almost eighty percent of the children had outgrown the allergy.
In children with egg allergies:
- By age four, only four percent of children had outgrown the allergy.
- By age ten, just over a third of children had outgrown the allergy.
- By age sixteen, sixty-eight percent of children had outgrown the allergy.
The bottom line, it seems, is that more children are suffering from milk and egg allergies, and it is taking longer for them to get over it — if they ever do. Food allergies seem to be more aggressive these days, but experts aren’t sure why.
If your young child has a milk or egg allergy, the Johns Hopkins researchers suggest that you continue with allergy testing through adolescence. Many children in the study hung on to milk and egg allergies until their teens.