FLICKR, USDAIn February 2015, an international team of researchers published the results of a study, termed the Learning Early about Peanut Allergy (LEAP) trial, that suggested it was possible to lower the risk of peanut allergies in infants at high risk by exposing the babies to the legume, challenging years of advice to parents to avoid giving their babies peanuts. Now, a follow-up study of these children, published Friday (March 4) in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), supports this exposure-based tactic, finding that, even after avoiding peanuts for a year, kids who had regularly consumed peanut-containing foods during the previous study were far less likely to be allergic. While more than 18 percent of children who had avoided peanut exposure during both trials developed peanut allergies, fewer than 5 percent of exposed children did.
“Giving peanuts very early on actually protected them from developing a peanut allergy,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NPR’s The Salt. “It’s a very important proof of concept.”
“This new study is great because . . . it looks like the benefit [of early exposure] is essentially permanent,” Scott Sicherer, a pediatric immunologist and allergy specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, told The Salt.
A second study published last week in (March 4) in the NEJM hints at the possibility that exposure at a young age to other allergenic foods such as eggs, wheat, and milk could have a similar benefit, though the results were not as conclusive. In this Enquiring about Tolerance (EAT) ...
