A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Temporal Trends in United States' Pediatric Food Allergy.

Authors

Katherine Caid, Corinne Keet

Published in

Annals of allergy, asthma & immunology : official publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology. Oct 16, 2026. Epub Oct 16, 2026.

Abstract

We previously found a significant increase in self-reported food allergy (FA) among US children from the 1990s to the early 2010s. Early introduction of allergenic foods has since been shown to help prevent food allergy, but it is unknown if this is reflected in population trends.
To summarize temporal trends in self-reported, pediatric FA prevalence in the US since 2011 and evaluate the effects of age and race/ethnicity on the estimated prevalence.
PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and publicly available data sets were searched for studies reporting population-based assessment of self-reported pediatric FA. Only one of 23,476publications was eligible, but it did not report estimates stratified by race/ethnicity. Therefore, our subgroup analyses focused on the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), which had nine administrations since 2011. Meta-regression and meta-analysis were performed for overall FA prevalence then stratified by age and race. Because NHIS survey questions and methodology changed in 2019, we focused on the 2012-2018 timeframe. Exploratory analyses were conducted with 2021 and 2024 data.
FA increased from 5.6% in 2012 to 6.6% in 2018 (1.6 percentage-point increase per decade; 95% CI: 0.5-2.7), with stabilization between 2021 (7.9%) and 2024 (7.2%). Prevalence increased most among 10-17 year olds (3.3 percentage-point increase per decade; 95% CI: 1.7-4.9) and was largely unchanged among younger children. Temporal trends did not differ by race/ethnicity.
Self-reported pediatric FA continues to increase in the US and has not convincingly begun to decrease in response to early allergenic food introduction, warranting continued evaluation and intervention.

PMID:
42887634
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 17 Oct 2026.

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