Early negatives were meaningless for us.

Our allergist sent our son home with an absolute negative on milk. He was
astonished (and I hope very embarrassed) to see the emergency room report
for the anaphylactic reaction.

For us, the lesson is this: if you're dealing with a highly atopic child,
no potentially serious allergen should be orally challenged without
immediate access to emergency treatment. If that means being challenged in
the doctor's office, or even as an inpatient with an IV inserted, then
that's how it should be done. Some foods just shouldn't be tried at all,
unless it's completely necessary.

For those children for whom there is not so high of a risk, there should at
least be some benadryl around, and you should have a plan, just in case.

In your case, with positive results, I would at minimum insist on an oral
challenge in the doctor's office. Or you could delay for a while - there's
no real need to rush the dairy.

At 02:42 PM 1/20/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi Everyone!
>
>My son was given a skin test and a RAST test for dairy at one year, and
>tested positive for a dairy allergy with both. He has now been retested
>with a skin test and a CAP-RAST test. The skin test still came back
>positive, but the CAP-RAST test came back at .55 kiliunits per liter which,
>the allergist told me, indicates that there is a greater than 95%
>probability that my son will not react if he eats dairy. Just wanted to
>know if anyone else has had similar test results, and how challenges went!
>
>Thanks!
>Tracy

Mark Feblowitz                  [log in to unmask]
Senior Principal MTS                    (781) 466-2947
GTE Laboratories Incorporated   (fax) (781) 466-2618
Waltham, MA 02451
http://TEC.gte.com      http://TEC.gte.com/MarkFeblowitz