Prevent allergies by giving babies peanut-based food, health officials say

New federal guidelines for dealing with an allergy to peanuts recommend introducing babies as young as 4 months old to small amounts of peanut products in an effort to reduce the number of allergic children, a population that has risen dramatically in recent years.

Doctors at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who released the guidelines Thursday said giving babies a small amount of peanut-containing foods when they are 4 to 6 months old will help sensitize them early in life and prevent severe allergies.

They suggest that even high-risk babies, those with eczema and/or an allergy to eggs, be tested by an allergist to determine if they are able to consume foods with peanut proteins.

“Peanut allergy has literally become an epidemic in recent years, and now we have a clear road map to prevent many new cases,” Dr. Stephen Tilles, president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology said in a statement Thursday. The update to the government’s previous allergy-prevention guidelines offers a lot of promise for worried parents, he said.

Millions of children nationwide are believed to be allergic to peanuts. The potent allergy has resulted in peanut-free classrooms and airline flights and has become a real-life example of tenets from the “hygiene hypothesis,” some doctors say.

That notion suggests that daily life has become so clean — so free of germs — that youngsters’ immune systems vigorously fight certain food proteins instead.

“It’s not that we have become too clean to fight dust mites or bacteria,” said Dr. Luz Fonacier, an allergist at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola. “It’s the withholding of peanuts by parents that makes kids so sensitive.”

Many parents have withheld peanuts out of fear, she and other experts said.

Introducing children early in life to peanuts teaches the immune system that the “peanut protein is not dangerous to the body,” said Dr. David Rosenthal, an allergist and immunologist at Northwell Health Physician Partners in Great Neck.

If the early introduction to peanut-containing foods becomes widespread, as recommended in the new guidelines, some doctors said the result might be a decline in the growing number of allergic children.

In the worst cases, a peanut allergy can lead to death following anaphylactic shock, doctors said, and milder cases have resulted in hives. Federal researchers have noted that food allergies of all kinds are a leading cause of emergency room visits. But peanut allergies are the cause of more deaths from anaphlylaxis than any other food allergy, federal research shows.

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The new recommendations add to previous ones of six years ago but differ on when children should be exposed to peanut products. The former guidelines emphasized that peanut-containing products should not be introduced until age 3.

“The new guidelines are based on the recent literature, which has found that introducing peanuts to more children earlier in life is better than waiting until age 3,” Rosenthal said.

He added that medical researchers noticed that Israeli children grow up in an environment that fits ideas outlined in the hygiene hypothesis, although as babies they are exposed to a popular puffed peanut-containing food called Bamba. The result, Rosenthal said, is the absence of peanut allergies on the scale of those seen in the United States.

Research at the Icahn School of Medicine of Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan found a threefold jump in the number of children allergic to peanuts in this country during a 13-year period.

Allergies increased from 0.4 percent of children in 1997 to 1.4 percent by 2010, the Mount Sinai research found.

Studying roughly the same time period — 1997 to 2011 — investigators at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a 50 percent increase in food allergies of all kinds among children nationwide. Peanut allergy is one of the most pervasive food allergies, the researchers said.

“Living with peanut allergy requires constant vigilance,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Preventing the development of peanut allergy will improve and save lives and lower health care costs.”