Revolutionary new allergy prevention

Children should not avoid allergens, but start as early as possible?

02/24/2015

Pioneering new findings from allergy research suggest that exposure to potential allergens in children contributes to allergy protection rather than increasing the allergy risk. So far, recommendations that advise pregnant women and toddlers the lowest possible contact with allergens must be fundamentally revised.

The research team led by Professor Gideon Lack of Kings College London presented the results of the Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study to the public at the Annual General Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology pointed out the future allergy prevention. The „Kurier.at“ quotes Univ.-Prof. Zsolt Szepfalusi from the University Children's Hospital at the MedUni Vienna this with the statement that it „such a breakthrough in allergy research in the last 30 or 40 years no more“ have given. The study was published in the prestigious „New England Journal of Medicine“.

Over the years, the researchers from the Immune Tolerance Network have analyzed the effects of early consumption of peanuts on the subsequent risk of allergies in the LEAP study. Now, the results of the first randomized study to prevent food allergy by including allergens in a large cohort of high-risk children are available, report Professor Lack and colleagues. Basically, the peanut allergy is an abnormal reaction of the body's immune system to harmless peanut proteins in the diet. Up to now, the assumption has been made that the contact causes an increasing risk of allergy. However, while peanut avoidance is often recommended during pregnancy, lactation and childhood, the prevalence of peanut allergies has doubled in the US and other countries over the last decade.

More than 600 children at high risk of allergy were examined
The researchers therefore hypothesized in the LEAP study that regular consumption of peanut-containing products in childhood produces a protective immune response rather than an allergic immune response. More than 600 children between the ages of four and eleven months at high risk of peanut allergy were divided into two groups as part of the study. One group regularly received peanut snacks, while the other avoided peanuts altogether. Until the age of five, the researchers observed the allergy development of children of both groups. The subsequent comparison clarified the preventive effect of early allergen exposure.

Early consumption of peanuts prevents peanut allergies
Of the children who avoided peanuts, 17 percent developed a peanut allergy by the age of 5, while only 3 percent of children who received peanut snacks showed a peanut allergy, write Professor Lack and colleagues. Overall, in infants with high allergy risk, continued consumption of peanuts in the first eleven months of life has been very effective in preventing the development of peanut allergies, the researchers report. „For decades, allergists have been recommending that young infants avoid allergenic foods such as peanuts to prevent food allergies“, but the current ones „Results suggest that this advice was wrong and may have contributed to the increase in peanut and other food allergies“, so Professor Lack.

Revision of nutritional recommendations required
Compared to the „courier“ explains the allergist Zsolt Szepfalusi that given the new study results „In the nutritional recommendations for allergy prevention for children soon some serious changes“ to be expected. In principle, it would require a turnaround of the overall strategy. „Now we need to change our strategy even more towards early exposure to allergens“, Szepfalusi, who was recently involved in the presentation of new allergy recommendations. These had already released the intake of allergens via the complementary foods, whereas previously a complete avoidance of the potential allergy triggers in pregnancy and infancy was applied. „Now we will probably put more emphasis on not only being allowed to, but expressly being“, he quotes „courier“ the allergist. According to the latest study results, this should apply in particular to children with a high risk of allergy.

Improvement of allergy prevention
Although the LEAP study explicitly refers to the risk of peanut allergy, the Szepfalusi hopes that the results will be transferable to other allergens such as milk, eggs and wheat. Overall, the new findings could not only contribute to a significant improvement in allergy prevention, according to researchers from the Immune Tolerance Network. (Fp)

Picture: Günther Richter