The researchers say their results have the potential to change how kids are treated for milk allergies — which affect as many as three percent of young children, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
Milk allergy is not the same as lactose intolerance, which is an inability to digest milk products. Kids with allergies can react to the proteins in milk and cheese with symptoms ranging from mild itching to potentially deadly anaphylactic shock.
In the study, milk-allergic kids who were able to tolerate the muffins from the start were also much more likely to eventually grow out of their milk allergies — hinting at the possibility of a muffin test to distinguish transient allergies from more severe ones.
In the study, researchers gave 88 milk-allergic children between 2 and 17 years old baked goods that included milk, and compared them to a group of 60 allergic children who followed the standard treatment, which is strict avoidance of milk products.
Just under half of children in the experimental group were able to consume dairy products such as skim milk or yogurt without having allergic reactions by the end of the study period.
That compared to less than a quarter of the group that avoided milk products, the authors report in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Among children who eventually outgrew their milk allergies, the ones who received the muffin therapy did so faster than the kids who avoided milk — suggesting that the exposure also helped to hasten the process.