A new study attempts to discover whether or not eating peanuts while pregnant increases the child’s risk of developing a peanut allergy.
Scott Sicherer of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and a team of colleagues studied more than 500 infants between 3 and 5 months who likely had a milk or egg allergy, but no known peanut allergy. Most of the children had not yet tried eating peanuts.
Published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the study found that more than 25% of the babies tested had a strong reaction during a peanut “sensitivity” test, with children of mothers who had consumed peanuts while pregnant having nearly three times the odds of showing this potential indication of an allergy. The more peanuts the mother ate, the greater her child’s chance of a positive test.
However, Sicherer and his team note that the research did not show a clear cause and effect relationship, and that the infants studied were only examined for a potential sensitivity to peanuts, which isn’t the same as an allergy diagnosis.
“I think that we unfortunately have to say that we do not yet know a certain answer,” Sicherer told Reuters Health [via Yahoo]. “But the good part of that conclusion is that mothers should not necessarily have a guilty feeling about their past diet decisions.”
The serious and potentially fatal allergy appears to be on the rise, and currently affects about 1% of children.
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