Vitamin D and food allergies - new research

Media attention last week was on a newly published study from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute which showed that a lack of vitamin D increases the likelihood threefold of food allergy in infants. Those infants with vitamin D insufficiency were also more likely to have multiple than single food allergies, with the odds increasing to ten times more likely among those with two or more food allergies.    

The study, Vitamin D insufficiency is associated with challenge-proven food allergy in infants by Katie Allen and others, involved 5276 12 month old infants.  The researchers also showed that the further people lived from the equator, the more likely they were to have food allergy, with children residing in Victoria and Tasmania having twice the odds of peanut allergy at age four or five and three times the odds of egg allergy than those in the northern states.

Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.  Published online 1 March 2013.  Please contact your library for the full text of the article.