NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children who have a potentially life-threatening allergy to cow's milk can often "learn" to tolerate milk through a carefully orchestrated, supervised programme in which they sample milk in progressively higher doses, research suggests.

After one year, more than one-third of cow's milk allergic children who completed the programme had become completely tolerant to cow's milk and more than half could tolerate limited amounts of milk, the research team reports in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

"Desensitisation, or 'specific oral tolerance induction,' can be achieved in a significant percentage of children with very severe allergic reactions," Dr. Egidio Barbi from 'Burlo Garofolo' University of Trieste told Reuters Health.