Feeding Infants with Cow’s Milk and Soy Allergy: Social and Economic Aspects of Efficacy

Cow’s milk protein and/or soy allergies are common in infants. They appear at an early infant stage and remain important in clinical practice from one up to three years. This problem has arisen through a historical tradition to diversify infant feeding with cow’s milk. One of the causes for this rarely observed allergy was the rapid increase in the use of artificial feeding formulas in the 20 century, accompanied by aggressive marketing policy of their manufacturers. As a result, the importance of breastfeeding was compromised and the percentage of breast-fed infants fell dramatically. For example, in the 1970s in the USA, about 75% of babies were formula fed. From this time, the incidence of allergic disease amongst early babies stages grew noticeably. Now two tendencies have become urgent: dietary intervention for primary allergy prevention and providing appropriate feeding in the cases of allergic manifestation (Mavroudi et al., 2011). The last wide report made by Cohrana highlights the efficacy of exclusive breastfeeding in both prevention and treatment of allergy (Host et al., 2008).