Peanut allergy, for which there is no known treatment or cure, tends to develop in childhood and persist into adulthood. NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci commented on the new guidelines:
“Living with peanut allergy requires constant vigilance. Preventing the development of peanut allergy will improve and save lives.
We expect that widespread implementation of these guidelines by health care providers will prevent the development of peanut allergy in many susceptible children and ultimately reduce the prevalence of peanut allergy in the United States.”
The guidelines deem some babies at higher risk of developing peanut allergy if they already have severe eczema, egg allergy – or both. The experts recommend that these infants have peanut-containing foods introduced into their diets as early as four to six months of age to reduce the risk of developing peanut allergy.
The panel suggest that infants with mild or moderate eczema should have peanut-containing foods introduced into their diets from around six months of age to reduce the allergy risk.
Babies without eczema or any food allergy can have peanut-containing foods introduced into their diets at any time but, in all cases, infants should be weaned on to other solids before peanuts are introduced.
These latest findings were prompted by results from the landmark Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study, a randomised clinical trial involving more than 600 babies. Clinical trials (published in February 2015) that demonstrated regular peanut consumption from infancy until five years of age led to an 81 percent reduction in development of peanut allergy in infants deemed at high risk because they already had severe eczema, egg allergy or both.
Dr. Daniel Rotrosen, director of NIAID’s Division of Allergy, said:
“The LEAP study clearly showed that introduction of peanut early in life significantly lowered the risk of developing peanut allergy by age 5.
The magnitude of the benefit and the scientific strength of the study raised the need to operationalise these findings by developing clinical recommendations focused on peanut allergy prevention.”
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