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Food allergies among U.S. children increasingly common, report indicates

Wednesday, November 19 2008 | Comments

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What's This? The prevalence of reported food or digestive allergy among children aged younger than 18 years increased 18% from 1997 to 2007, according to a briefing from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Researchers drew on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for their briefing on pediatric food allergy. A multipurpose health survey, the NHIS is the principal government source of information on the health of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States. The NHIS, which included a sample of approximately 9,500 children in 2007, contains questions on food allergy, asthma, and other allergic conditions. In addition, the authors used data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey to estimate the number of hospital discharges attributable to food allergy among children.

Defining food allergy as a potentially serious immune response to eating specific foods or food additives, the authors reported that 4 of every 100 children have a food allergy. Eight types of food account for >90% of allergic reactions in children: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat.

The prevalence of food allergy among all children was 3.9%. Although rates were similar for boys (3.8%) and girls (4.1%), the rate for children aged younger than 5 years (4.7%) was significantly higher than the rate for children aged 5 to 17 years (3.7%). The authors also observed that rates were significantly lower for children of Hispanic ethnicity (3.1%) than for non-Hispanic white (4.1%) or non-Hispanic black (4.0%) children.

Children with food allergy are 2 to 4 times more likely to have other related conditions as compared with children who do not have food allergy. For example, 29.4% of children with food allergy also have asthma compared with 12.4% of children without food allergy who have asthma. Similarly, 27.2% children with food allergy also have eczema or skin allergy and 31.5% have respiratory allergy compared with rates of 8.1% and 8.7%, respectively, among children without food allergy who have these conditions.

The report also noted an increase in pediatric hospitalizations associated with food allergy-related diagnoses. For 1998-2000, the average number of hospital discharges annually related to pediatric food allergy was 2,615; for the years 2004-2006, it was 9,537. The increase in hospital discharges could be related to increased awareness, reporting, and use of specific medical diagnostic codes of food allergy or it could represent a real increase in children who experience food-allergic reactions, the authors said.

"Reported food allergy has increased among children of all ages in the United States over the last 10 years," the report concluded.

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