The Dietary Prophylaxis of Allergic Disease in Infancy

Abstract

There is little doubt that the incidence of allergic disease is steadily increasing, both relatively and absolutely. Deesl reviewed evidence that the sickness rate for allergy had increased tenfold in the 20 years preceding 1960. Presently about 20 percent of children up to the age of 15 years are allergic,² and in at least one-third of the children who visit the pediatrician's office the question of possible allergic disease must be considered.³ Nothing, however, has illustrated the importance of allergy in childhood as strikingly as the recent publication from the U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare⁴ which indicates that allergy accounts for about one-third of all chronic conditions reported in children under 17 years of age and that nearly one-fourth of the days reported lost from school because of chronic conditions in this age group were due to asthma. Even more startling is the report of Anderson.⁵ In a collaborative study involving pediatricians and pediatric allergists in the Dallas, Texas, area, of over 2,000 successive unselected newborn infants thus far observed, the immediate familial history of allergy approaches the 50% level.