Certain Foods May Cure Allergies

What’s the Latest Development?

“Researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York studied 88 children with milk allergies, giving them baked milk goods in a supervised environment to see the effect on their ability to digest milk. While some children in the study could not tolerate even baked milk, others were able to and it seemed eating it allowed them to consume, over time, regular milk as well. ‘Not all children with milk allergy are the same; there clearly is a spectrum of severity,’ said study co-author Anna Nowak-Wegrzyn of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute. 

What’s the Big Idea?

Nowak-Wegrzyn said the study helps to explain why some children with milk allergies who are more careless about what they eat don’t have problems, while other children who are much more careful still have a reaction after consuming trace amounts of milk. “[The study] is very important for two reasons,” said Robert Wood of Johns Hopkins University. “First, it allows them to eat a large number of foods that contain baked milk, which significantly enhances quality of life. Second, as demonstrated in this study, exposure to baked milk may help to build tolerance to uncooked milk, potentially hastening resolution of the allergy.”