Allergic reactions to milk appear sooner than reactions to hen’s eggs: a retrospective study

BACKGROUND: Oral food challenge test doses are recommended to be performed at least 20 min apart; however, the times of symptom provocation from the start of the oral food challenge have never been compared between different foods. In this study, the durations from the start of the oral food challenge to symptom development in children with egg or milk allergy were compared. METHODS: Thirty-eight and 74 children who had previously passed oral food challenges to 96 g of yogurt and pumpkin cake containing ¼ whole egg underwent oral food challenges with 200 mL raw cow’s milk and 1 whole scrambled egg, respectively; of these, 15/38 and 33/74 children had a reaction. RESULTS: The median ages of patients with a positive challenge were 5.8 and 5.1 years for milk and eggs, respectively. The median times for the first symptom occurrence were 20 min (range, 5–55 min) and 50 min (5–480 min), respectively (p = 0.009). The first symptoms developed within 30, 60, and 90 min in 12/15 (80 %), 15/15 (100 %), and 15/15 (100 %) children with milk allergies, and in 10/33 (30.3 %), 20/33 (60.6 %), and 26/33 (78.8 %) children with egg allergies, respectively. The median times of peak symptoms were 50 min (10–210 min) and 120 min (30–560 min) (p = 0.001), and those of symptom disappearance were 90 min (30–240 min) and 180 min (80–700 min) for milk and eggs (p = 0.002), respectively. DISCUSSION: Based on the results of our study, symptoms developed within 30 min for only a subset of patients for eggs, and may even take upwards of 60 min to develop. The times of symptom disappearance were 90 min and 180 min for milk and eggs, respectively, indicating that egg-allergic patients should be observed for a longer period time than milk-allergic patients. CONCLUSIONS: Allergic reactions induced by milk appeared and disappeared sooner than those induced by eggs. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40413-016-0104-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.