Can peanut allergies be prevented?

The epidemic of peanut allergies is no longer solely found in Western countries as it has also begun to emerge in Africa and Asia. While waiting to find effective treatment, several teams of British and American researchers have shared their knowledge to determine if there was a way to reduce the frequency of this very debilitating condition for the child. Their results were recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

INTRODUCE PEANUTS TO A BABY’S MEALS BEFORE 11 MONTHS OLD

Scientists wanted to know if it was possible ‘to inoculate’ babies against such allergies by exposing them to peanuts from the youngest age. To do this, they selected 530 children aged between 4 and 11 months suffering from severe eczema, an allergy to eggs, or both. They then performed cutaneous tests to detect which of these young guinea pigs were already sensitive to peanuts. The researchers separated them into two groups (‘sensitive’ and ‘non-sensitive’). In each group, they asked the parents to regularly give peanuts to their child (gradually increasing the dosage for those in the ‘sensitive’ group).

The results are impressive. In the ‘non-sensitive’ group, at only 60 months of age, only 2% of the children who had regularly eaten peanuts before the age of 11 months were allergic, as opposed to 9% in the group of those who had not consumed peanuts. Even more astonishing, is that in the group of children who already presented signs of sensitivity before the age of 11 months, 20% of those became allergic, as opposed to 50% of those who had never eaten them!

The researchers concluded, “The early introduction of peanuts significantly decreased the frequency of the development of peanut allergy among children who are at high risk and modulated immune responses to peanuts.”