In the United States alone, some 8% of children have a food allergy, including more than 2% with a peanut allergy. In 2015, however, researchers suggested that peanut allergies could be prevented in babies and young children through early exposure, debunking the belief that introducing the nut too soon would inevitably lead to a life-long allergy. By 2017, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) took note, formally issuing an early-introduction approach, alongside other national guidelines. Now, a decade later, yet another landmark study corroborates these findings.
Published last month in Pediatrics, the study determined that food allergy rates in children under 3 years old fell by more than 27% after allergy guidelines were issued in 2015. That percentage dropped by more than 40% after those same recommendations were further expanded in 2017. Per the study, about 60,000 kids have avoided food allergies in the past decade thanks to the revised guidelines, including 40,000 who otherwise would’ve developed a peanut allergy.
“Early allergen introduction works,” Dr. David Hill, a pediatric allergist and the study’s lead author, told NPR. “For the first time in recent history, it seems like we’re starting to put a brake pedal on the epidemic of food allergy in this country.”
To draw their conclusions, Dr. Hill and his team analyzed the electronic health data of 125,000 children in the U.S., pulled from records at nearly 50 pediatric practices across the country. The team identified allergies through diagnostic codes and Epi-Pen prescriptions, all while targeting the rate of food allergies in children before and after the revised guidelines were published. The study only followed children through the age of 3, so it’s currently unclear whether the allergy drop was sustained into adolescence.
“It’s highly persistent,” Dr. Hill noted. “Only about 10% of kids who develop a peanut allergy will outgrow that peanut allergy.”
Though scientists don’t fully understand why food allergies develop, they have more or less identified how they play out within the body itself. In a nutshell, the body’s immune system incorrectly reads the proteins in peanuts as dangerous and, in response, releases chemicals that trigger allergic symptoms like hives or anaphylaxis. That’s precisely why Dr. Hill believes that introducing allergenic foods during infancy can help the body adjust accordingly, especially since the immune system is still developing. Ideally, parents should expose infants to peanuts and similar allergens between four and six months.
“It doesn’t have to be a lot of the food, but little tastes of peanut butter, milk-based yogurt, soy-based yogurts, and tree butters,” Dr. Hill explained in CNN Health. “These are really good ways to allow the immune system exposure to these allergenic foods [safely].”
Read the full study in Pediatrics to learn more.
A new study has found that allergy guidelines implemented in 2015 have significantly reduced food allergy rates in children under 3 years old.
Sources: Advice to feed babies peanuts early and often helped 60,000 kids avoid allergies, study finds; Reversing peanut advice prevented tens of thousands of allergy cases, researchers say; Peanut Allergies Have Plummeted in Children, Study Shows
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