THE incidence of potentially fatal peanut allergy has more than doubled in Australian children in less than a decade. 

An ACT-based study's found by age six about one in every 200 children born in 1995 developed the allergy, jumping to one in every 140 children born in 2001.

And for babies born in 2004 the rate rose once again to about one in every 90 children.

Study author Dr Ray Mullins, a clinical immunology and allergy physician, said it reinforced anecdotal evidence there's been a tsunami of little kids with food allergy.

Little is known about its cause, let alone the reason for its rising incidence, and only 20 per cent of those with the allergy later grow out of it.

AAP