Is peanut exposure the answer to peanut allergy?
Can eating peanuts prevent peanut allergy?
Peanut allergy is a life-threatening condition among children worldwide.
A groundbreaking study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that exposure to peanuts in infants at risk for the allergy may significantly decrease the frequency of the allergy and modulate these children’s immune responses to peanuts.
As part of the British LEAP (Learning Early About Peanut Allergy) study, researchers randomly assigned 640 infants between the ages of 4 and 11 months with severe eczema, egg allergy or both to consume or to avoid peanuts.
The peanut consumption group consumed at least 3g of peanut protein (one peanut proides 0.2g peanut protein) per week for at least 50% of the weeks during the study. Out of this cohort, they collected a subset of data on participants between the age of 4 and 11 months who exhibited a pre-existing sensitivity to a peanut extract. Once participants reached 60 months of age, they were tested for peanut allergy.
At the end of the study, the research team was surprised to learn that of the 98 participants who initially tested positive for peanut allergy, 35.3% in the avoidance group but only 10.6% in the consumption group actually developed the allergy.
Of the 530 infants who had tested negative for peanut allergy, only 13.7% of the avoidance group and 1.9% of the consumption group developed the allergy.
Although these initial results need to be validated by further testing before standard recommendations are made for parents to give peanuts to peanut-sensitive infants, this research may radically change the way we view peanut allergy in the future.
