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Dietary avoidance impaired growth in children with food allergies

Dietary restrictions put children with food allergies at risk for impaired growth compared with non-allergic children, according to data presented during the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in San Antonio.

In particular, children with milk allergies exhibited lower percentiles for weight and BMI vs. children with other food allergies.

Although current treatment for food allergies consists largely of avoidance of allergenic foods, these dietary restrictions could affect proper nutrition and growth. To determine whether allergy incidence affects growth in pediatric patients, researchers from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill retrospectively reviewed charts of 245 children with food allergies aged 1 month to 11 years who visited outpatient clinics from 2007 to 2011.

The researchers assessed height, weight and BMI percentiles according to current CDC data and compared them with 4,584 age-matched healthy children and 205 age-matched children with cystic fibrosis and celiac disease — chronic childhood conditions also known to impair growth.

According to results, after age 2 years, children with food allergies exhibited lower percentiles for weight (67.5 vs. 72.4] and BMI (57.6 vs. 68) compared with the healthy age-matched cohort (P<.05). Additionally, compared with children with one or two allergies (n=193), children with more than two food allergies (n=52) exhibited lower percentiles for height (74.8 vs. 62.2) and weight (69.2 vs. 55.3).

“Compared to those children in the sample who had one or two food allergies, those with more than two had lower percentiles for height and weight,” researcher Brian Vickery, MD, said in a press release. “It suggests that the number of food allergies is a factor — a greater number of food allergies translates into a greater number of dietary restrictions.”

Of particular interest, children with milk allergy (n=66) were observed to exhibit lower percentiles for weight (54.5 vs. 70.64) and BMI (48.9 vs. 58.8) compared with other food allergies (P<.05).

“The relationships uncovered between food allergic children, particularly those with more than two and those suffering from milk allergy, and the examined growth markers stress the need for nutritional assessment and intervention to ensure that food allergies do not contribute to any growth delay,” study researcher A. Wesley Burks, MD, president of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, said in a press release.

For more information:

Hobbs CB. Abstract #361. Presented at: 2013 Annual Meeting of the AAAAI; Feb. 22-26, 2013; San Antonio.