Guideline-defined symptoms of non-immunoglobulin E (IgE)- mediated cow’s milk allergy (CMA) are common in infants, according to a study published in Clinical & Experimental Allergy. Rosie Vincent, MBChB, and colleagues assessed the frequency of symptoms associated with non-IgE-mediated CMA during infancy using the international Milk Allergy in Primary Care guideline. This secondary analysis included data for 1,303 exclusively breastfed 3-month-old healthy infants from the Enquiring About Tolerance (EAT) trial. The researchers found that two or more non-IgE CMA symptoms were reported by 25% of families for mild-to-moderate symptoms and 1.4% for severe symptoms each month between ages 3 and 12 months. There was a peak of 38% with two or more mild-to-moderate symptoms and 4.3% with two or more severe symptoms at 3 months, even when participants were not directly consuming cow’s milk. During at least 1 month of the study, 74% of participants reported two or more mild-to-moderate symptoms and 9% reported two or more severe symptoms. At 6 months, there was no difference between those consuming and not consuming cow’s milk in terms of the proportion of children with two or more symptoms.
