Peanut allergy advice to pregnant women recommended to be changed

The Food Standards Agency has recommended to ministers that current advice to avoid peanuts during pregancy, breastfeeding and early life should be changed. It turns out that there is no evidence to support current advice that, where there is a family history of allergy, mothers should avoid peanuts during pregnancy, while breastfeeding, and not introduce peanuts into their child’s diet until the age of three.

Many allergists believe that this advice is in fact harmful, and that high exposure to peanuts in ealy life may reduce the risk of peanut allergy developing.

Nut Allergy Death from Anaphylactic Shock

The Northern Echo reports the tragic case of 32 year old Angus Myers who died from eating a curry that he was assured was nut free. Mr Myers collapsed and died from anaphylaxis after eating a takeaway curry. It is likely that despite assurances to the contrary, the curry contained peanut oil or almond oil. It is not clear whether an Epipen or other adrenaline auto-injector was administered.

Although deaths from nut or peanut allergy are extremely rare, this sad case demonstrates that they can and do happen. Dr Desa Lilic, a consultant immunologist at the University Hospital of North Durham, was quoted by the Northern Echo as advising people with nut allergy not to consume curries they have not made themselves.

Should Infants Eat Nuts

Department of Health guidelines say babies should not be fed nuts until they are two or three years old. Yet this advice is based on no evidence and may be positively harmful. The House of Lords report on allergies earlier this year called on the DoH to withdraw this advice, but so far this has been ignored. In the meantime, a new study published by Dr George du Toit in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology suggests that children who are fed peanuts from an early age are ten times less likely to develop peanut allergy. The study looks at Jewish children in Israel (where infants eat peanuts from an early age) compared with the UK where we mostly avoid giving children nuts until they are much older


The best chance of answering the question once and for all is the LEAP Study which is taking children at risk of peaut allergy and under tightly controlled and randomised conditions feeding half the infants peanuts and keeping the other half off peanuts. In a few years time, we should see clear evidence either way.