More education needed to prevent allergic reactions among children: study

Chicago – Parents need more education to prevent young children from suffering potentially fatal allergic reactions to food, according to a study (.pdf file) published online June 25 in the journal Pediatrics.

Researchers studied 512 infants 3 to 15 months old with a documented or likely allergy to milk or egg for an average of about 36 months. They reported that 269 children experienced at least one allergic reaction to food during the study, and found parents provided the food in 36.2 percent of the cases.

The reasons for unintentional exposures included reduced supervision, misreading labels and cross-contamination, according to the study.

Post a comment to this article

Safety+Health welcomes comments that promote respectful dialogue. Please stay on topic. Comments that contain personal attacks, profanity or abusive language – or those aggressively promoting products or services – will be removed. We reserve the right to determine which comments violate our comment policy. (Anonymous comments are welcome; merely skip the “name” field in the comment box. An email address is required but will not be included with your comment.)