Can You Cure Allergies? Study Says Exposure At Early Age Can Keep Kids From Becoming Allergic To Peanuts

Parents rejoice: There may be a way to keep kids from developing a potentially-deadly peanut allergy, and it involves none other than feeding toddlers peanuts.

In guidelines released by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Thursday, an expert panel recommended feeding kids at “high risk” of a peanut allergy — evidenced by severe eczema, an egg allergy or both— foods containing peanuts as early as between the ages of four months and six months. Children at moderate risk of such an allergy, defined as those showing signs of mild eczema in infancy, should begin consuming peanut-containing foods at the age of six months.

The NIH recommendations stemmed from a February 2015 study titled, “Learning Early About Peanut Allergy,” or LEAP, which followed more than 600 toddlers considered at high risk of the allergy—a portion of whom were given foods containing peanuts until age five, while the other portion avoided such foods. Of the kids whose parents kept peanut products out of their reach, 17 percent developed the allergy. Of those who consumed foods containing peanuts, just 3 percent became allergic.

“The LEAP study clearly showed that introduction of peanut early in life [sic] significantly lowered the risk of developing peanut allergy by age five,” Daniel Rotrosen, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the NIH, said in a press release on the guidelines. He added that the statistically significant results pushed administrators to “operationalize these findings” through recommendations to the broader public.

No cure exists for life-threatening intolerances to peanuts, one of the most common sources of food allergy. Still, as a widely-cited study has shown, the issue tends to receive excess media hype: Of the several million Americans who suffer from food allergies, about 2,000 people are hospitalized each year as a result of anaphylaxis, a serious allergic reaction, and 150 people die—compared to nearly 100 times as many who died from gun violence last year.