Cutting Peanut Allergy Risk with Early Exposure

For years, parents have been following advice stating that children under the age of five shouldn't eat peanut-based products for fear of an allergic reaction. Giving young children peanuts could also indeed be a choking risk, but what about foods like smooth peanut butter or delicious peanut butter cups? A new study from the King's College London now suggests that our children could actually benefit from a peanutty treat from as young as four months old. In infant terms, there is quite a big leap from being four months and being five years old, so what's going on? The study created a way of examining if there was a way of catching a peanut allergy early on and make sure it didn't manifest into something severe and life-threatening. It was also a way of testing the decades-worth of advice administered by allergists recommending against peanut consumption. The number of people with peanut allergies has been steadily increasing over the years, despite advice that young children shouldn't be exposed to potential allergies. And so the research team wanted to investigate what would happen with controlled early exposure to those at high-risk of contracting the allergy. Their results have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine . Trials were carried out on 640 babies from Evalina London Children's Hospital. The children were all aged between four and 11 months, and had showed early warning signs of developing a severe peanut allergy by the time they were five years old. These warnings include severe eczema, an allergy to eggs, or both. Some of the children had already developed a mild allergy to peanuts, and this was determined using skin-prick tests. Half of the children in the trial were allowed to add small amounts of peanut-based food to their diets, while the others continued to avoid introduction to it. The allergy rate in children who had already proven sensitive to the food was found to fall from 35% to just 11% - a vast improvement in itself. And out of the 14 children in every 100 that would normally go on to develop an allergy, only two would with the therapy. This means the risk of becoming allergic to peanuts fell by a whopping 86% when peanuts were introduced into the diet from an early age. According to the team, this is the first time that an allergy risk has been caught before it was able to manifest properly. Added to which, the findings could go on to apply to other allergies - though parents have be warned not to experiment with diets at home without first consulting their doctor. Professor Gideon Lack, study lead, said that while the team is aware of how contradictory the study results are with previous advice. However, they felt that research in high-risk infants was essential to stem the growing epidemic of peanut allergies. "Our findings suggest that [previous] advice was incorrect and may have contributed to the rise of peanut and other food allergies," he explained. The team advises that parents with babies or young children with either an egg allergy, eczema or both, speak to their doctor or paediatrician. You never know - you could be catching a peanut allergy in the making, and you could potentially be saving your child's life.