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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-MED-Child-Food-Allergies.html NY

Times October 22, 2008 Rise

Seen in Food Allergies in Children By THE

ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 1:55 p.m. ET ATLANTA (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. 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. 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.

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On the Net: The CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs