Early exposure to peanuts can prevent long-term allergy Infants exposed to peanut products had a 71% lower rate of peanut allergy Kids’ resistance to peanut allergy persisted even if they didn’t regularly eat peanuts later in childhood WEDNESDAY, May 29, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Feeding kids peanuts early in childhood can drastically reduce their risk of developing a peanut , a new clinical trial reports. Children regularly fed peanut products from infancy to age 5 had a 71% lower rate of peanut allergies by the time they reached their teen years, researchers reported May 28 in the journal . The study “should reinforce parents’ and caregivers’ confidence that feeding their young children peanut products beginning in infancy according to established guidelines can provide lasting protection from peanut allergy,” said , director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
“If widely implemented, this safe, simple strategy could prevent tens of thousands of cases of peanut allergy among the 3.6 million children born in the United States each year,” Marrazzo said in a NIAID news release. For the study, researchers tracked more than 500 kids who had earlier participated in a clinical trial to test exposure to peanut as a means of warding off peanut allergy.
Half of the kids regularly consumed peanuts from infancy, while the other half avoided peanuts. Early introduction of peanut into their diets reduced kids’ risk of peanut allergy by 8.