Nutritional status of Egyptian children with cow's milk allergy: A case-control study

To evaluate Egyptian children's anthropometric measures, hematological parameters, and nutritional indicators with cow's milk allergy (CMA) compared to healthy controls and assessed if these variables had gender-specific relationships.

We included children with clinically evidenced CMA non-IgE-mediated histories of CM sensitivity and its protein fractions and positive CM results in the challenge test as the case group, while healthy children without any food allergies were controls. Patients' demographics, clinical characteristics, anthropometric measures, hematological parameters, and dietary intake were collected and assessed.

This study involved 102 children with CMA and 100 controls, aged 4.62 to 8.5 years. While 72.5 % of CMA children had normal heights, 61.8 % had impaired weight, and 49 % had a low BMI. CMA children showed significant reductions in iron levels associated with decreases in hematological parameters. CMA children had significantly deficient calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D levels compared to controls, but there were non-significant differences regarding phosphate and zinc levels. The CMA group revealed significant anthropometric indicators differences between males and females and significant differences between genders in the deficient levels of Hb, mean corpuscular volume, calcium, zinc, and vitamin D, while no significant differences between the deficient levels of iron and mean corpuscular hemoglobin. The logistic regression demonstrated that none of the studied factors had predictive potential for distinguishing between CMA patients and control participants.

Children with CMA exhibited impaired growth and significantly reduced hematological parameters and nutrients, emphasizing the importance of individualized nutritional monitoring to ensure adequate nutrient intake and proper growth.