Study: Food Allergies On Rise In U.S. Kids

CDC Reports 10 Percent Increase Over Decade; Doubling In Peanut Allergies Seen As One Cause

(CBS/AP)  Food allergies in American children seem to be on the rise, now affecting about 3 million kids, according to the first federal study of the problem.

Experts said that might be because parents are more aware and quicker to have their kids checked out by a doctor.

About 1 in 26 children had food allergies last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. That's up from 1 in 29 kids in 1997.

The 18 percent increase is significant enough to be considered more than a statistical blip, said Amy Branum of the CDC, the study's lead author.

"Years ago, maybe we'd see kids with one or two sensitivities and now we're seeing kids allergic to six or more foods," Dr. William Reisacher, of the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, told CBS News.

Nobody knows for sure what's driving the increase. A doubling in peanut allergies - noted in earlier studies - is one factor, some experts said. Also, children seems to be taking longer to outgrow milk and egg allergies than they did in decades past.

Other theories include "hygiene hypothesis" - the idea that children now spend so much time indoors that their immune systems may not have a chance to properly develop, reports CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook.

There is also the belief that these allergies may be caused by food processing techniques, for example dry-roasting peanuts.

And with an increasingly globalized foody supply, kids are exposed to a wider array than ever before.

"If you are eating more foods in greater variety, you are going to be allergic to more of those foods," Reisacher told CBS News.

But also figuring into the equation are parents and doctors who are more likely to consider food as the trigger for symptoms like vomiting, skin rashes and breathing problems.

"A couple of decades ago, it was not uncommon to have kids sick all the time and we just said 'They have a weak stomach' or 'They're sickly,"' said Anne Munoz-Furlong, chief executive of the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, a Virginia-based advocacy organization.

Parents today are quicker to take their kids to specialists to check out the possibility of food allergies, said Munoz-Furlong, who founded the nonprofit in 1991.

The CDC results came from an in-person, door-to-door survey in 2007 of the households of 9,500 U.S. children under age 18.

When asked if a child in the house had any kind of food allergy in the previous 12 months, about 4 percent said yes. The parents were not asked if a doctor had made the diagnosis, and no medical records were checked. Some parents may not know the difference between immune system-based food allergies and digestive disorders like lactose intolerance, so it's possible the study's findings are a bit off, Branum said.

However, the study's results mirror older national estimates that were extrapolated from smaller, more intensive studies, said Dr. Hugh Sampson, a food allergy researcher at the Mount Sinai School of medicine.

"This tells us those earlier extrapolations were fairly close," Sampson said.

The CDC study did not give a breakdown of which foods were to blame for the allergies. Other research suggests that about 1 in 40 Americans will have a milk allergy at some point in their lives, and 1 in 50 percent will be allergic to eggs. Most people outgrow these allergies in childhood.

About 1 in 50 are allergic to shellfish and nearly 1 in 100 react to peanuts, allergies that generally persist for a lifetime, according to Sampson.

Some people have more than one food allergy, he said, explaining why the overall food allergy prevalence is about 4 percent.

Children with food allergies also were more likely to have asthma, eczema and respiratory problems than kids without food allergies, the CDC study found, confirming previous research.

The study also found that the number of children hospitalized for food allergies was up. The number of hospital discharges jumped from about 2,600 a year in the late 1990s to more than 9,500 annually in recent years, the CDC results showed.

Also, Hispanic children had lower rates of food allergies than white or black children - the first such racial/ethnic breakdown in a national study.

The reason for that last finding may not be genetics, said Munoz-Furlong. She is Hispanic and said people in her own family have been unwilling to consider food allergies as the reason for children's illnesses. "It's a question of awareness," she said.

[frontdesk200]

I have a food allergies and I''m 48 years old. It was not diagnosed until a few years ago. So I did not grow out of it.The worse one of my food allergies is corn. I can not consume anything with corn. Almost everything has high fructose corn syrup in it. Check the labels! I get very tired, have headaches, I start coughing and I get very congested. I have felt this way most of my life. I''m on allergy drops and watch what I eat. I no longer have the headaches,the fatigued, or cough. Except if I have something with a lot of corn in it. My drops are a 3-5 yr. program. I thank Dr. James Thompson of Allergy Associates in La Crosse, WI for my freedom and education on food allergies.

[luvcomments]

Food rarely causes allergies. They are caused by all the non-foods that are fraudulently labeled as "food". Kids and pets are smaller than adult humans and more likely to develop reaction to this garbage. However, wanna research the reactions actually suffered by the cattle, chicken, etc. that we consume? And now they''re mucking up even the produce.

[doctajim]

"Allergic reaction to routine innocuous materials can be conditioned with the concurrent use of an anti-cholinesterase."
Translation - insecticide residues on EVERYTHING you eat and drink cause your nervous system to trigger an immune response to a perceived attack - thus, an allergic reaction such as anaphylaxis.

[lucasnico]

You sure it isn''''t the vaccines? *rolling my eyes*

Posted by YBotherAtAll

For some kids, it is indeed the vaccines. *rolling my eyes right back atcha!*

[ybotheratall]

You sure it isn''t the vaccines? *rolling my eyes*

[puzzler125]

Is it possible the food itself is not the allergen? What about the artificial colors, preservatives, additives and just plain chemical *** this is in so many of our foods? Sometimes the answer is not quite as "simple" as first thought and that mitigating factors are the cause. My mother fed me "people food" as a baby. I had 0% "baby food" as such (canned, jar, and/or processed infant food). I am quite sensitive to processed foods and have long supposed it is because I was never exposed to the artificial ingredients as a baby.