Cookies May Help Kids Beat Milk Allergy

March 21, 2011— -- SAN FRANCISCO -- Kids who can't tolerate milk but can pass the "muffin test" without symptoms may outgrow their allergy faster if they raid the cookie jar on a regular basis to keep baked dairy in their diet, researchers found.

Children who did not react to milk that was heated sufficiently to change the shape of allergy-causing proteins had a 27.8-fold greater likelihood of losing the allergy altogether within three years, according to Dr. Jennifer S. Kim of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and colleagues.

Among such children, 60 percent could drink a glass of milk without problems after three years compared with just 9 percent of those who couldn't tolerate what the researchers referred to as baked-milk products, the group reported here at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology meeting.

Read this story on www.medpagetoday.com.

Tolerating baked milk may simply be a marker for less severe milk allergy that is more likely to resolve on its own, Kim told MedPage Today.

However, the allergy resolution rate appeared accelerated in those who incorporated waffles, cookies, and other baked goods made with milk into their diet.

Kids who found out they could eat such foods and then did on a daily basis were 16 times more likely than those who followed a strict elimination diet to have overcome their allergy and been able to drink a glass of milk without problems after three years.

It's possible that eating heat-altered milk proteins regularly acts as a form of "natural immunotherapy" to retrain the immune system not to attack unaltered milk protein, Kim suggested in an interview.

Indeed, the immunologic response in that group as measured by milk-specific immunoglobulin G4 and basophils and skin prick wheal size showed changes that "looked very much like someone who's gone on some form of immunotherapy," co-author Dr. Hugh A. Sampson of Mount Sinai explained at a press conference where the results were discussed.

The group had discovered in 2008 that 75 percent of milk-allergic kids challenged with a waffle could eat it without an allergic reaction. The same proved true in challenges with muffins and, for some, the gold standard -- pizza.