Eating peanuts during infancy can help reduce allergies: new Montreal study

Introducing peanuts into a person’s diet before the age of three has helped reduce allergies, according to a study led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) – and based on patient data from the Montreal Children’s Hospital (MCH).

In 2017, the Addendum Guidelines for the Prevention of Peanut Allergy were adopted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the U.S. recommended that peanut butter be given to babies from the age of four to six months to reduce food allergies.

In Canada, during the same time, peanut butter was not introduced until the child was three years old.

“The effect of these new recommendations on allergies had never been evaluated in Canada before,” reads a press release. “Researchers compared children with and without known peanut allergy who presented to the MCH Emergency Department (ED) for a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) to peanuts between 2011 and 2019. Data after 2019 were excluded due to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which ED visits decreased significantly.”

In total, 429 patients were affected by peanuts (anaphylaxis) in all the cases recorded between May 2011 and December 2019. 180 patients had no peanut allergies, compared to the 249 who did.

Senior Author of the study Dr. Moshe Ben-Shoshan said they noticed a decrease in the rate of peanut-related anaphylaxis after 2017 in children aged two and under who never experienced a severe allergic reaction before.

“No significant change was seen in children aged three to 17, or in children of any age who already had a known peanut allergy,” he said.

According to the data, the rate of first-time peanut-induced anaphylaxis among children under two years old decreased by 7.96 cases for every 100,000 visits.

“Over the past decade, food allergies have increased significantly in North America. In Canada, peanut allergy is the most common food allergy in children and the leading cause of anaphylaxis, which can be life-threatening,” noted the press release. “The results of this study therefore demonstrate the importance of policies such as the adoption of new recommendations to save lives and reduce costs and the use of healthcare system resources.”

Subsequent research will be needed to confirm the data from the MCH study in other regions of Canada and to verify whether this can be applied to other food allergies.