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4 Percent of U.S. Children Have Food Allergies
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
The number of children who have food allergies is not only increasing, it now encompasses 4% of all kids in the United States, according to an analysis of four large, national surveys published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
The study--the first to make a broad estimate about the prevalence of food allergies among U.S. children--supports previous studies suggesting that allergy rates are rising rapidly, for reasons that are unclear.
Government researchers found that self-reported food allergies increased 18% between 1997 and 2007. Healthcare visits for food allergies in children nearly tripled between two time periods studied: 1992 through 1997 and 2003 through 2006. In the later period, U.S. children had an average of 317,000 visits to healthcare settings per year for food allergies.
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