Monday, March 7, 2016

Feed Peanuts to Your Baby to Help Avoid Future Nut Allergies

The following is an excerpt from the latest study about nut allergies in children.

"A bold and controversial experiment that showed feeding peanuts to babies and young children could protect them from developing allergies later has shown long-term effects, doctors reported Friday. The children were largely protected a year after stopping peanuts.

After avoiding peanuts for a year, just 5 percent of the children who were given peanuts as babies developed a peanut allergy, the researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. That compares to nearly 19 percent of children who didn't get peanuts as infants.

The findings reinforce guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups, which recommend giving children small amounts of peanuts to help avert allergies. For children at high risk because of a family history of allergies, or because they have eczema or other allergies, this should only be done under a doctor's supervision.

'This study offers reassurance that eating peanut-containing foods as part of a normal diet--with occasional periods of time without peanut--will be a safe practice for most children following successful tolerance therapy,'  said Dr. Gerald Nepom of the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason in Seattle.
'The immune system appears to remember and sustain its tolerant state, even without continuous regular exposure to peanuts,'  added Nepom, who also heads the Immune Tolerance Network, a research group sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Esther
fixdhealthcare.com
drkollars@gmail.com

No comments:

Post a Comment