Researchers have been trying to find methods to reverse the potentially life-threatening peanut allergy, which has risen more than 300% in the U.S. alone, from 0.4% in 1997 to 1.4% in 2010. British scientists discovered a promising lead last year. Infants that had a high probability of developing the deadly allergy—those who already had eczema or egg allergies—and were given peanuts between the ages of four and 11 months, were less likely to develop the allergy by five years old reported in Quartz.
But the study was controversial in the scientific community because it opposed established dogma that parents shouldn’t feed allergy-triggering foods to their children until they matured, but a sect of researchers still wanted to know if the results could be reproduced and further developed. And earlier this week, it was.
Originally published in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists analyzed those same high-risk children and discerned that the earlier evidence was consistent. As a result, the focus group was still at lower risk for contracting allergies at six years old, one-plus year after the initial study. Lead researcher and author, Gideon Lack of the pediatric allergy department at King’s College London told CBS News in a statement that the“early consumption of peanuts gives you long-lasting protection against peanut allergy.”
Lack encourages that the fear of allergies manifests itself in real life. In other words, excluding peanuts from children’s diets might prevent them from producing an immune tolerance. Although the research is not conclusive, the link may lead to more comprehensive evidence.
Image credit: Wikipedia Public Domain