Can a Peanut a Day Keep Allergies Away?
Vivian Hernandez-Trujillo, MD, an allergist at Miami Children’s Hospital, in Florida, says that pregnant women with allergies often ask what they can do to protect their babies from developing allergies “and we really don’t know what advice to give.” As a step toward finding out, researchers at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City studied pregnant mice with peanut allergies. Some of the mice were fed small amounts of peanut protein while they were pregnant and breastfeeding, the idea being to increase their tolerance to the nuts. The other mice were fed a normal diet. After birth, the baby mice were given escalating amounts of peanut protein for five weeks in an effort to further sensitize them to peanuts. Doctors call this oral immunotherapy. At the end of the study, the researchers “challenged” the pups with a larger serving of peanuts, to see if it would evoke an allergic reaction. Almost all the babies born to mothers who ate a normal diet had allergic reactions, the study
