Kids keep food allergies longer

The conventional wisdom to wait out a food allergy seems to be less true now than in previous generations.

Writing in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Robert Wood, MD, and colleagues at Johns Hopkins studied over 1,700 children with egg or milk allergies over 13 years. Established research said that 75% of these children should outgrow the allergy by age 3. Milk and egg allergies affect 2% to 3% of children in the US, respectively.

But the Johns Hopkins researchers founds that only 20% of children with milk allergies, and 4% of children with egg allergies, outgrew them by age 4. Many still had them going into their teens, but 21% of children with milk allergy, and 32% of children with egg allergy, still had them at age 16.