BALTIMORE—Some children with a history of severe milk allergy can safely drink milk and consume other dairy products every day, according to research led by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and published in the Aug. 10 online edition of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Investigators followed up with a subset of children who were part of an earlier Hopkins Children’s-led study published in 2008 in which patients allergic to milk were given increasingly higher doses of milk over time. For many of them, continuous exposure to milk allergens—the proteins that trigger bad reactions—slowly and gradually retrained their immune systems to better tolerate the very food that once sent those systems into overdrive.
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 milder and milder over time. The follow-up varied from 3 to 17 months, depending on how long it took patients to increase their milk intake.