Only 45% of US parents give peanuts to infants despite latest advice

Parents person agelong avoided giving children peanuts aboriginal successful their beingness for fearfulness of making them allergic, but updated US proposal published successful 2017 recommends aboriginal introduction

Health 5 November 2021

By Jason Arunn Murugesu

A vessel of peanuts

Dieter Heinemann/Westend61 GmbH/Alamy

Less than fractional of US children are fixed peanuts to devour successful the archetypal 11 months of their lives, adjacent though their aboriginal instauration lowers the hazard of processing peanut allergies.

Ruchi Gupta astatine Northwestern University successful Illinois and her colleagues surveyed much than 3000 households with children who were 7 months to 3.5 years old. Participants were demographically typical of the US caregiver population.

“High allergy hazard children who devour peanuts aboriginal successful beingness are 5 times little apt to make a peanut allergy,” says Carina Venter, a co-author of the study, astatine the University of Colorado successful Denver. That uncovering successful a 2015 survey led to a swift alteration successful US guidelines regarding the aboriginal instauration of peanuts.

Parents had agelong avoided giving their children peanuts for fearfulness it whitethorn marque them allergic, and authoritative guidance connected the taxable was unclear. But successful 2017, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommended that precocious allergy hazard children successful the US beryllium fixed peanuts betwixt 4 and six months of age, portion different children should besides beryllium fixed peanuts ‘freely’ and aboriginal successful their lives.

However, successful the caller analysis, the squad recovered that lone 58 per cent of participants said their doctors had advised them astir the benefits of aboriginal peanut introduction. Only 40 per cent of these respondents said that their doctors had told them to present peanuts to their kid arsenic aboriginal arsenic the archetypal 11 months.

Just 44.7 per cent of participants reported that they had fixed their children peanuts that early. Gupta and Venter presented this enactment astatine a gathering of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology connected 5 November.

Gideon Lack astatine King’s College London, who led the 2015 study, said helium wasn’t amazed by these latest findings, but adds that the figures would astir apt person been a batch worse 5 years ago.

”There are a batch of doctors and families who are inactive peanut-phobic and are acrophobic that giving peanuts aboriginal volition effect successful allergies,” helium says. “We present cognize the other is true.”

Getting much parents to springiness their children peanuts volition necessitate a alteration of civilization and much education, helium says.

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• allergies