Milk protein enteropathy after acute infectious gastroenteritis: experimental and clinical observations.

Animal models of allergic gastroenteropathy have defined both morphologic and physiologic changes that accompany the immune-mediated reaction to a dietary protein. In such models a broadening of the allergic response to other dietary proteins present in the gastrointestinal tract may occur during the localized anaphylactic reaction. The characteristic histologic intestinal findings of food protein-induced enteropathy may develop in selected infants with protracted diarrhea after infectious enteritis. Mechanisms underlying the induction of this response remain to be explained, but they may in part be similar to the broadening of the hypersensitivity response seen in experimental models of allergic enteropathy.