Scientists have hailed a "remarkable" breakthrough in allergy treatment as a study revealed that feeding children peanuts regularly from infancy until the age of age five can protect against allergy into adolescence.
Researchers at King’s College London found that introducing peanuts into babies’ diets could reduce the rate of allergy by 71 per cent.
Around 2 per cent of young children in North America, the UK and Western Europe suffer from peanut allergies. For some, even small amounts of peanuts can lead to a life-threatening allergic reaction.
For the first trial, half of the participants were asked to regularly consume peanut from infancy until the age of five, while the other half were asked to avoid peanuts during that period.
The early introduction of peanuts was found to reduce the risk of peanut allergy at age 5 by 81 per cent.
Both groups were then allowed to eat as much or as little peanuts as they wanted.
The researchers found that by age 12 or older, 15.4 per cent of the children who avoided peanuts had a peanut allergy, while only 4.4 per cent of those who ate peanuts from an early age did.
These results showed that regularly consuming peanuts from infancy reduced the risk of peanut allergy in adolescence by 71 per cent compared to early peanut avoidance.
Lead investigator Professor Gideon Lack, from King’s College London, said: “Decades of advice to avoid peanuts has made parents fearful of introducing peanuts at an early age.
“The evidence is clear that early introduction of peanut in infancy induces long term tolerance and protects children from allergy well into adolescence. This simple intervention will make a remarkable difference to future generations and see peanut allergies plummet.”
Prof Lack added that early consumption of peanuts would prevent more than 100,000 new cases of peanut allergy every year worldwide.
Professor George Du Toit, co-lead investigator from King’s, said: “This is a safe and highly effective intervention which can be implemented as early as four months of age.
“The infant needs to be developmentally ready to start weaning and peanut should be introduced as a soft pureed paste or as peanut puffs.”
A separate trial is underway in five NHS hospitals to investigate whether eating small amounts of trigger foods could help build up immunity in children.
The new clinical oral immunotherapy trial is using small doses of everyday foods to train the bodies of children and young people to tolerate an allergen. All foods are given under medical supervision.
If successful, the three-year trial could provide more evidence for everyday foods treatment to be made available on the NHS.
Full results are expected in 2027.
