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Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

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Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#171

Post by charrondev »

hilbert42 wrote: post #168

When I was a kid in Australia decades ago we'd never heard of peanut allergies and swapping peanut butter sandwiches at school was the norm. No doubt there were allergies back then but what on earth has made them so much more common these days? Same with asthma. Something has gone terribly wrong.

I’d be curious to see statistics on this as well. If I were to hypothesize it would be a combination of 3 factors:

- Nut Allergies in particular seem to be reduced with early exposure [0]. Maybe dietary trends have changed in a way that causes less early exposure? - Child mortality rate used to be much higher. Children with allergies used to be part of this mortality rate. This combined with parents with mild allergies that might have previously not survived to have children cause the incidence to increase. - People today are exposed to many more types of food. Many people who might have a particular allergy may not have ever been exposed to that allergen.

Another one I’d throw out there would be nearsightedness. Of course a lot of people wear contacts, but I’d imagine incidence of glasses is higher than it used to be.

Reported rates of nut allergies rates have definitely increased though. [1]

[0] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/introducing-pe... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8477625/

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#172

Post by onli »

ugh123 wrote: post #125
eskibars wrote: post #9

Our son is very allergic to peanuts and less so to cashew, and sesame. We went through oral immunotherapy and it's been absolutely life changing. He used to need an epi pen in case of chance encounter, but now he eats 2 whole peanut m&ms every day to keep his dosage up. It's been difficult finding an allergist in Germany that's willing to accept this and move forward Obviously everyone's mileage will vary, but I'm ha…

> It's been difficult finding an allergist in Germany that's willing to accept this and move forward What are they saying? They don't believe in oral immunotherapy?

They tend to be critical against immunotherapy in general, if it's not for those allergies where the therapy has a good chance of working and is without risk. Otherwise avoidance of the allergen is preached. We encountered that with a cat hair allergy, treatment was refused.

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#173

Post by shmichael »

eskibars wrote: post #9

Our son is very allergic to peanuts and less so to cashew, and sesame. We went through oral immunotherapy and it's been absolutely life changing. He used to need an epi pen in case of chance encounter, but now he eats 2 whole peanut m&ms every day to keep his dosage up. It's been difficult finding an allergist in Germany that's willing to accept this and move forward Obviously everyone's mileage will vary, but I'm ha…

In Israel this is done naturally by feeding children Bamba, a puffed peanut snack, at a very early age. Research shows significantly decreased levels of peanut allergy.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/23/388450621/fe...

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#174

Post by eskibars »

halfcat wrote: post #146
eskibars wrote: post #9

Our son is very allergic to peanuts and less so to cashew, and sesame. We went through oral immunotherapy and it's been absolutely life changing. He used to need an epi pen in case of chance encounter, but now he eats 2 whole peanut m&ms every day to keep his dosage up. It's been difficult finding an allergist in Germany that's willing to accept this and move forward Obviously everyone's mileage will vary, but I'm ha…

If you are willing to say, what was your son’s peanut allergy level? One of our sons is 6/6 on peanuts and they were very hesitant to try oral immunotherapy, more or less saying they weren’t willing to given the risk of anaphylaxis.

I don't remember for sure, but I'm pretty sure it was 1 below the max level. I seem to recall it was on a scale of 5 with our test, but it might have been on a scale of 6

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#175

Post by dragonwriter »

hilbert42 wrote: post #168

When I was a kid in Australia decades ago we'd never heard of peanut allergies and swapping peanut butter sandwiches at school was the norm. No doubt there were allergies back then but what on earth has made them so much more common these days? Same with asthma. Something has gone terribly wrong.

> When I was a kid in Australia decades ago we'd never heard of peanut allergies and swapping peanut butter sandwiches at school was the norm.

Recognition of severe peanut allergies plus a common false hypothesis that early exposure increased the risk of such allergies developing led lots of parents in lots of places for a few decades to avoid their children having early exposure, leading to a huge increase in severe allergies (because it turns out, early exposure actually reduces the risk, which was recognized in large part because Israel, where the avoidance thing not only didn't catch on but where peanut-based puffed snacks remained a popular snack for kids from pretty much when they could eat solid food, was conspicuously left out of the major upswing in peanut allergies). Since the recognition that avoidance is counterproductive has worked its way into general advice in the last few years, we should see a noticeable drop in the incidence.

> Same with asthma. Something has gone terribly wrong.

Lots of stuff going on with asthma, I think: It's got a genetic component and treatment getting better probably increases the incidence, all other things being equal, there's a lot of known environmental factors, some of which are probably increasing in probability of exposure, and it’s also made more noticeable and more likely to be diagnosed by allergies and other co-occurring inflammatory conditions, which gets back to the allergy discussion...

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#176

Post by [deleted] »

hilbert42 wrote: post #168

When I was a kid in Australia decades ago we'd never heard of peanut allergies and swapping peanut butter sandwiches at school was the norm. No doubt there were allergies back then but what on earth has made them so much more common these days? Same with asthma. Something has gone terribly wrong.

[deleted]

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#177

Post by hnick »

charrondev wrote: post #171
hilbert42 wrote: post #168

When I was a kid in Australia decades ago we'd never heard of peanut allergies and swapping peanut butter sandwiches at school was the norm. No doubt there were allergies back then but what on earth has made them so much more common these days? Same with asthma. Something has gone terribly wrong.

I’d be curious to see statistics on this as well. If I were to hypothesize it would be a combination of 3 factors: - Nut Allergies in particular seem to be reduced with early exposure [0]. Maybe dietary trends have changed in a way that causes less early exposure? - Child mortality rate used to be much higher. Children with allergies used to be part of this mortality rate. This combined with parents with mild allergi…

Multiple newer parents I've met (in Australia) have practiced complete avoidance of such serious potential allergens. The idea seems to be that a very young child may have a reaction, but not be able to tell you and just cry or go red - as per usual at that age, so you probably don't realise it's serious until it's too late.

They gradually introduce these foods later. Maybe too late, if the idea of early exposure is accurate, but it's very much a case of "can't be too safe" when I asked them.

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#178

Post by eskibars »

shmichael wrote: post #173
eskibars wrote: post #9

Our son is very allergic to peanuts and less so to cashew, and sesame. We went through oral immunotherapy and it's been absolutely life changing. He used to need an epi pen in case of chance encounter, but now he eats 2 whole peanut m&ms every day to keep his dosage up. It's been difficult finding an allergist in Germany that's willing to accept this and move forward Obviously everyone's mileage will vary, but I'm ha…

In Israel this is done naturally by feeding children Bamba, a puffed peanut snack, at a very early age. Research shows significantly decreased levels of peanut allergy. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/23/388450621/fe...

Yeah, we hadn't heard of this when our son was born, but the allergist mentioned it. When our daughter was born, we gave her something like this at his recommendation. The ones we got were some puffs that have a whole pile of allergens in tiny doses. Causation vs correlation and all that, and a small sample size, but our daughter doesn't have any issues with any allergies.
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