engleski

Correlation of Clinical Symptoms and Laboratory Findings in Children With Milk Allergy

Food hypersensitivities can be divided into toxic and non toxic, and the latter can further be subdivided in immune and non-immune hypersensitivities. Cow's milk allergy or intolerance occurs in 5-15% of infants mostly during the first year of life, or occasionally later. The symptoms may involve different organ systems, especially gastrointestinal system, skin and respiratory system. For the diagnosis of cow's milk protein allergy, double blind placebo controlled food challenge has been used as a gold standards. Since the test suffers from some drawbacks, many reports have pointed to the need for novel and simpler diagnostic procedures and criteria. In our study, clinical symptoms and laboratory findings of patients with cow's milk allergy were compared to asses the possible correlation between particular laboratory findings, clinical picture, and the organ system predominantly involved. There were no significant dfferences in the levels of IgE, cow's milk protein specific IgE, eosinophilia, prick test results, rectal mucosa biopsy histology, and atopy incidence in patient families among the children with gastrointestinal and cutaneous symptoms. Improvement in the symptoms with dietary therapy irrespective of clinical presentation and type of hypersensitivity underlying the symptoms in all these patients strongly suggests that clinical response should be a basic criterion for the diagnosis of cow's milk protein allergy.

allergens ; dist therapy ; double-blind method ; immunoglobulin E ; infant ; infant newborn ; milk hypersensitivity

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