In a press release Thursday, the National Institutes of Health reported an addendum to its official guidelines for Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy. The specific change is intended to address the precipitous rise in peanut allergies which has occurred recently. For many years, parents have been strictly advised to avoid exposing babies to peanuts, eggs, and other potential allergen foods, on the hypothesis that early exposure could be dangerous and exacerbate problems in those children likely to develop allergies.
The new guidelines are a complete reversal in that the NIH now recommends earliest exposure (4 to 6 months) for children at most risk of developing allergies, such as those with severe eczema and/or known egg allergies. Other children should also have peanuts -- though not whole ones, which can be a choking hazard -- introduced into diets freely along with solid foods. The new guidelines are based on results from the landmark Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study. From the NIH press release:
"The LEAP study clearly showed that introduction of peanut early in life significantly lowered the risk of developing peanut allergy by age 5. The magnitude of the benefit and the scientific strength of the study raised the need to operationalize these findings by developing clinical recommendations focused on peanut allergy prevention," said Daniel Rotrosen, M.D., director of NIAID's Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation.
CNN reports on the history of the LEAP study, noting that there was an earlier practice in Israel to expose children to peanuts as early as possible. Anecdotally, these children had a much lower frequently of allergies than Israeli children raised in the UK. The LEAP study thus assigned over 600 children randomly to a group with early exposure or a group which avoided peanuts completely for the first 5 years of life. The results were striking:
All the children participating in the study were at high risk of peanut allergy due to family history or having eczema or egg allergy themselves, said Nepom [one of the developers of the LEAP study]. At age 5, the children in both groups were given peanuts and observed, Nepom said: Eighteen percent of the children who had been avoiding peanuts had a peanut allergy at age 5, compared with only 1% of the children who had been introduced to peanut butter or Bamba early in life. "This showed that early introduction of peanut flour had over 80% prevention effect," Nepom said.
The study and the new NIH guidelines represent one of the most scientifically rigorous rationales to reconsider allergy guidelines in general. Proponents of early exposure to problematic foods, along with the hygiene hypothesis, claim that the obsession with avoiding exposure to potential allergens in early life has actually caused the current epidemic of allergies. Approximately 1 in 13 children in the U.S. has a food allergy; over 2% alone have peanut allergies. While death from anaphylaxis after exposure is relatively rare, various studies indicate that peanuts are likely the most common trigger in children and frequently result in hospital visits. The NIH policy change is also quite relevant, following the extended national debate on cost of anaphylaxis medication, particularly the outrageous prices for EpiPens (see SoylentNews coverage here, here, and here).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:22PM
Just wait until it comes out "scientists knew all along" that the most likely result of the measles vaccination campaign was to generate an epidemic of insane proportions. It is only a matter of time before we see one that affects ~50 million adults in the united states alone by my estimate (from vaccination rates, vaccine failure, and waning immunity, which are all admittedly shaky data). Can you imagine what will happen when 1/5 of the adult population is sick at the same time?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12176860 [nih.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @10:53PM
The solution to our unemployment problem.
You are of course assuming that the system isn't working as intended.
Maybe a few partial extinction events are intentionall being left in the cards to help ease economic woes.
It would not be the first time force depopulation has been tried, for the 'good of society.'