Changing the advice of peanuts prevents cases of allergies

For years, parents have been told not to expose their children to peanuts, to prevent a potentially serious allergy. But 10 years ago, Historical study She found the opposite to be true, noting that if children eat peanut products at an early age, they are less likely to develop allergies to them.

Health experts quickly took notice, and the resulting reversal in pediatric guidelines helped move peanuts from the top spot as a cause of food allergies in children under 3 in the United States, according to a report. Published a new study In a peer-reviewed journal pediatrics.

"Early introduction of allergens," Dr. David Hale, who led the study, tells NPR: "For the first time in modern history, it appears we are starting to put the brakes on the food allergy epidemic in this country."

Growing concerns about food allergies have reshaped parts of Americans’ diet, from schools and camps banning peanut butter in sandwiches to airlines eliminating once-ubiquitous bags of salted nuts. In 2015, New England Journal of Medicine The prevalence of peanut allergy has quadrupled among children in the United States, noting growth from 0.4% in 1997 to more than 2% in 2010, he noted.

But when U.S. health guidelines changed in 2015 and 2017, that trend changed, too, according to Hill, a pediatric allergist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who is also an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania.

"There was a 43% reduction in the prevalence of peanut allergy," Hill says, "And a 36% decrease in the prevalence of food allergies."

The changed guidelines are estimated to have prevented peanut allergy in at least 40,000 children in the past decade.

The turning point in peanut allergy prevention dates back to 2015, when… The research has been published The aim was to solve the mystery: why was peanut allergy ten times higher among Jewish children in the UK compared to Israeli children of similar origins? The researchers noted that while British and American parents kept their children away from peanut products, many Israeli parents kept their children away from peanut products. They routinely feed their children a puffed peanut snack It’s called Bamba.

Revised recommendations, including in Dietary Guidelines for AmericansIt calls for infants considered to be at high risk of peanut allergy to be introduced to foods containing peanuts as early as 4 to 6 months, in line with advice published by the World Health Organization in 2017. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Hill and colleagues studied the rate of food allergies in young children before and after revised guidelines for peanuts and other allergens were published. They did this by analyzing the health data of more than 120,000 children in the United States using records from dozens of different pediatric practices.

Dr. Corinne Cate, a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who works in the epidemiology of food allergies, says she finds the study interesting, even if she’s cautious about reading too much into it. She did not participate in the research.

"I’m a little surprised by these results because I might have expected that we might have more diagnoses simply because people were thinking about allergies more" In the past decade, she says.

Kate says one reason she’s cautious is that her own research has found that families haven’t fully implemented the new guidelines, in many cases due to fear that exposing an infant to peanut products might also put a sibling or parent with an allergy at risk.

Kit also says it’s difficult to conduct a high-quality study on the prevalence of food allergies. She points out that an influential 2015 study called step (Early Learning About Peanut Allergy), produced definitive results through a large clinical trial that followed hundreds of young children over time.

Hill and his colleagues acknowledge that their study has limitations, such as relying on diagnosis codes, which do not necessarily equate to actual allergy rates. Their data also does not include information about children’s eating habits.

However, he sees the study as another positive sign that the strategic shift is helping children. The benefits are far-reaching, he adds, because for many peanut allergies are a lifelong condition.

"It is very stable," Hill says. "Only about 10% of children who develop a peanut allergy will outgrow the peanut allergy."

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