A magazine investigation Pediatrics revealed that offering small portions of peanuts to babies four months and older helps prevent serious allergies.
Berlin, October 22 (DW).- Ten years after a revolutionary study showed that giving products of peanut (peanuts in South America and the Caribbean, peanuts in Spain) to you drink small can prevent serious allergiesnew data confirms its impact.
New research, published in the magazine Pediatricsnotes that peanut allergies began to decline in USA (EU) after guidelines promoted in 2015, which recommended introducing this food to babies from four months onwards.
How allergies fell after the new guidelines
The rate of peanut allergies in children ages zero to three fell more than 27 percent after the first recommendations in 2015 and more than 40 percent after their expansion in 2017.
“It’s quite extraordinary, right?” says the author of the new study, David Hill, an allergist and researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Hill and his team analyzed medical records from pediatric clinics across the country to see how diagnoses evolved before and after the guidelines.
“Today I can tell you that there are fewer children with food allergies than there would have been if we had not started this public health initiative,” he adds.
What causes peanut allergy?
Peanut allergy occurs when the immune system mistakes the proteins in peanuts for something harmful and releases chemicals that cause symptoms such as hives, breathing problems, and sometimes severe anaphylaxis.
Since 2015, about 60,000 children have avoided food allergies, including 40,000 cases of peanut allergies. Still, about eight percent of children in the United States have a food allergy, and more than two percent are allergic to peanuts.
From fear to prevention: a paradigm shift
For decades, pediatricians advised waiting until the child was three years old to offer allergenic foods such as peanuts. But in 2015, the LEAP study (Learning Early About Peanut Allergy), directed by Gideon Lack of King’s College London, changed that view.
The work showed that giving peanuts in childhood reduced the risk of allergy in more than 80 percent of cases. Later analysis confirmed that protection persisted in about 70 percent of children into adolescence.
Slow but effective implementation
Despite the evidence, the application of the guidelines was gradual. Only 29 percent of pediatricians and 65 percent of allergists reported following the expanded 2017 recommendations, according to surveys cited in the study.
Initial confusion over how to introduce peanut outside of clinical settings delayed its adoption, explains Ruchi Gupta of Northwestern University.
But now, there is “promising evidence that early introduction of allergens is not only being adopted, but may be having a measurable impact,” the authors of the new paper say.
An opportunity to reduce allergies
In the US alone, 33 million people live with food allergies. Peanut allergy advocates hailed the breakthrough: “It reinforces what we already know and underscores a significant opportunity to reduce the incidence and prevalence of peanut allergy nationwide,” said Sung Poblete, director of Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE).
Guidelines updated in 2021 recommend introducing peanuts and other allergens between four and six months of age, even without prior testing.
How to introduce peanuts safely
Hill advises parents to consult their pediatrician and start with small amounts: “It doesn’t have to be a lot of food, but small bites of peanut butter, milk-based yogurt, soy-based yogurts and nut butters,” she explains.
“These are really good ways to allow the immune system to be exposed to these allergenic foods safely,” he adds.
True stories: when science changes habits
Tiffany Leon, a Maryland dietitian and director at FARE, applied the new guidelines with her two children. His mother was surprised at first by this directive, but Leon explained that “the science had changed.”
“As a dietitian, I use evidence-based recommendations. So when someone said to me, ‘This is how it’s done now, these are the new guidelines,’ I just thought, ‘Okay, that’s what we’re going to do,'” she says.
Edited by Jose Urrejola, with information from Science Alert and Pediatrics.