To prevent peanut allergies, start snacking early
Infants who eat them less likely to be allergic
Want to avert a lifelong peanut allergy? Feed your baby peanut foods. That’s the takeaway from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, which issued guidelines to health care providers and parents Thursday. Officials say peanut allergies can be curbed by introducing children to foods that contain the legume as young as early infancy. The new rules follow scientific research that showed introducing foods with peanuts during infancy can prevent allergies.
The NIAID said peanut allergies are a growing health problem with no treatment or cure. They usually develop in childhood and remain into the adult years. In a survey in 2010, about 2% of U.S. children Daniel Rotrosen, had a peanut allergy, which was more than four times the estimate in 1999. The decision to rework the guidelines came after a trial of more than 600 infants found that regular peanut consumption until age 5 reduced the likelihood of an allergy by 81%. “The study clearly showed that introduction of peanuts early in life significantly lowered the risk of developing peanut allergy by age 5,” said Daniel Rotrosen, the director of the NIAID’s Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation.
NIAID Director Anthony Fauci said people operated under the “incorrect assumption” that they should forbid their children from eating peanuts because they may be an allergy risk. “As it turns out, counterintuitively, that works against the child,” he said.
The new guidelines will “save lives and lower health care costs,” Fauci said. “We expect that widespread implementation of these guidelines by health care providers will prevent the development of peanut allergy in many susceptible children and ultimately reduce the prevalence of peanut allergy in the United States.”
allergy expert