Giving Young Children Peanut Products Reduces Allergy Risk, Study Finds | Allergies

According to researchers, feeding children peanut products from infancy until the age of five reduces their risk of developing a peanut allergy until early adolescence.

Children who regularly ate peanut pastes or peanut puff snacks between four and six months were 71% less likely to have a peanut allergy at age 13 than those who avoided peanuts, indicating a lasting effect of early consumption of peanuts.

A simple dietary intervention could prevent around 10,000 cases of life-threatening peanut allergies each year in the UK alone, doctors have said, and reduce global cases by 100,000 a year.

Gideon Lack, professor of pediatric allergy at King’s College London, said decades of advice to avoid peanuts had made parents reluctant to give them to their children from a young age. But he said it was now clear that early exposure to peanuts provided long-term protection against the allergy.

“I highly recommend that babies be introduced to peanuts at four months if they have eczema and at six months if they don’t have eczema,” Lack told the Guardian. Babies with eczema are at greater risk of developing peanut allergies, likely because traces of this food can penetrate the skin more easily and be targeted by the immune system.

Peanut allergy rates have increased in many Western countries in recent decades. In the UK, one in 50 children now suffer from an allergy, with around 14,000 new diagnoses each year. Although 20% of children usually outgrow the allergy, for the rest, this condition can mean avoiding peanuts for life and inevitably worrying about a serious allergic reaction if they accidentally come into contact with the food.

Despite their name, peanuts are legumes and come from a different plant family than nuts like almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, pistachios and walnuts. About a third of children with peanut allergies will be allergic to at least one type of tree nut.

Previous work by the same researchers found that regular consumption of peanut products from early childhood reduced the risk of peanut allergy by 81% at age five, compared to children who avoided peanuts during the same period. The latest study, known as the Leap-Trio trial, followed 508 children until the average age of 13, during which time they were free to eat or avoid peanuts as they pleased.

The trial found that children in the early peanut consumption group had a 71% lower risk of peanut allergy compared to those in the peanut avoidance group. As expected, a small percentage of children outgrew their allergy naturally. The results published in NEJM Evidence show that protection remained intact regardless of children’s eating habits after the age of five.

Lack said there is a “double benefit” to getting children to start eating peanut products early. “You will prevent the vast majority of peanut allergies, but in cases where you cannot prevent it, you will be able to identify children earlier when treating them is much easier,” he said.

“Once they’re seven, eight, nine months old, you’ve really missed the boat. But even if you miss the boat, you identify children with peanut allergies early and can treat them with immunotherapy.

The researchers said peanut butter or peanut puffs could be given to breastfeeding children once they were able to handle soft foods.

The goal should be to give the equivalent of a heaped teaspoon of peanut butter three times a week. Although whole or chopped peanuts should be avoided due to the risk of choking, peanut puffs can be ground into a baby-friendly paste.