Eating peanut products as a baby dramatically cuts the risk
of allergy, a study suggests.
Trials on 628 babies prone to developing peanut allergy
found the risk was cut by over 80%.
The King's College London researchers said it was the
"first time" that allergy development had been reduced.
Specialists said the findings could apply to other allergies
and may change diets around, but warned parents not to experiment at home.
Daily
nut
The research team in London had previously found that Jewish
children in Israel who started eating peanuts earlier in life had
allergy levels 10 times lower than Jewish children in the UK.
The trial, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine,
focused on babies as young as four months who had already developed eczema - an
early warning sign of allergies.
Skin-prick tests were used to identify those who had not yet
developed peanut allergy or had only a very mild response.
The trial indicated that for every 100 children, 14 would normally go
on to develop an allergy by the age of five.
But this fell by 86% to just two out of every 100 children with the
therapy.
Even the children who were already becoming sensitive to peanuts
benefited. Their allergy rates fell from 35% to 11%.
Lead researcher Prof Gideon Lack told the BBC: "[It was] exciting
to us to realise for the first time that in allergy, we can actually truly
prevent the development of disease.
"It represents a real shift in culture."
He said that high-risk children "need to be evaluated, have
skin-prick testing and dietary advice, [before], in most cases, early
introduction of peanut".
Prof Lack added: "We realise this goes very much contrary to
previous advice, but it is very much essential that we direct our attention to
this group of infants and stem this growing epidemic of peanut allergy."
Until 2008, at-risk families were told to actively avoid peanut
products and other sources of allergic reactions.
No comments:
Post a Comment