Study: Food, skin allergies increasing in children

NEW YORK - Experts say they're not sure why parents are reporting more skin and food allergies in their children.

A big government study says 1 in 20 children in the U.S. have food allergies That's a 50 percent increase from the late 1990s.

For eczema and other skin allergies, it's 1 in 8 children. That's an increase of 69 percent. The study found no increase in hay fever or other respiratory allergies.


Dr. Morton Galina, a pediatric allergist at Atlanta's Emory School of Medicine, says, "We see a lot of kids in clinic that really aren't" allergic to the foods their parents worry about." He says hives are sometimes blamed on a certain food when a virus was the actual cause.

But experts also believe there's a real -- and unexplained -- increase going on, too.

Dr. Peter Lio, a Northwestern University pediatric dermatologist who specializes in eczema, says big cities have higher childhood allergy rates. He says maybe some air pollutant is the unrecognized trigger.


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