Kids Food Allergies Blog

There’s a 3/4 chance that milk-allergic children can tolerate cow’s milk if it’s heated extensively.

Huh?

I am not a doctor.  I am supremely unqualified to offer medical advice.  However, my non-medical opinion is that none of us should try this at home.

But, according to a Reuter’s article based on a recent study written up in the July 15 2008 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, it’s true.  Here’s why:

Children with persistent milk allergy produce antibodies that react against specific milk proteins that their immune system recognizes as foreign, according to Dr. Anna Nowak-Wegrzyn, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and her colleagues. Children who have outgrown their milk allergies still have milk-specific antibodies, but the specific milk proteins that trigger this reaction can almost entirely be destroyed through exposure to high temperatures. The researchers therefore reasoned that children with milk allergy might tolerate milk if it were extensively heated.

According to the article, there is one caveat.  The higher your child’s skin prick test to milk — the less likely they are to be able to tolerate heated milk, and the more severe symptoms they will exhibit when exposed to heated milk.   That confirms my suspicion that my daughter would be in the 25% for whom heating milk would make no difference.