(NewsNation) — New research out of Northwestern University suggests there may be a way to prevent peanut allergies in children.
According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 0.5 percent of kids around the world had a peanut allergy in 1997. Numbers have skyrocketed since then, with 2 percent of children being allergic to peanuts.
Old guidance instructed parents to keep babies away from peanuts, but new guidance from researchers says early peanut introduction could reduce or even prevent the risk of allergies later in life. While it has been in place for years, doctors haven’t always been alerting parents properly.
Dr. Ruchi Gupta, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at Northwestern University and the senior author of the study, said it finally cracks the code to make it easier for doctors and parents to stay on track using simple, digital reminders to turn research into real-world results.
“I think the big issue is that pediatricians are very busy in those four- and six-month wellness check visits and adding something else to their plate without giving them some help first, and that can be challenging,” Gupta said. “What we did is discuss with them what they need and what helped them is prompts in their EMR (electronic medical record), and something for the parents.”
The training includes simple prompts in electronic medical records, easy handouts to take home and reminders to start introducing peanuts to their children early and safely. Gupta said the combination of education plus reinforcement is what’s moving the needle.
For long-term impacts, other doctors are saying if the new tools are spreading and continue to be used nationwide, there could be a generational change in how many kids develop food allergies.
“Prevention is always a much more powerful tool than reaction,” Dr. Will Haas, an integrative medicine specialist, said. “If we can teach every pediatrician these simple tools, we could reshape the trajectory of food allergies and have tens of thousands of kids spend less time in the emergency departments.”
The next step in this research is seeing if this eventually translates into fewer allergies, and to track if the babies in the study have a peanut allergy or not by the time they turn two.
