Isn't there a correlation with how much dairy products, gluten, etc.. people are consuming and may react badly with peanuts or other organic food?
Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies
241–249 of 249 posts
Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I asked our allergist about oral immunotherapy for my daughter and he cited a study that found that avoidance was more effective in preventing severe reactions.
We asked about swim lessons and were told avoidance is the best way to prevent drowning.
Swim lessons don't require you to swim every day for the rest of your life
Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I asked our allergist about oral immunotherapy for my daughter and he cited a study that found that avoidance was more effective in preventing severe reactions.
I mean, avoidance is more effective than vaccination in preventing you from getting the flu, but that’s not the point of getting vaccinated.
How does one practically avoid flu exposure?
Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fail to see how your chosen quotes prove your point. How is 66% reduction not statistically significant?
It is. OP took a sentence out of context that said that overall food allergies across the whole group were not reduced by a statistically significant amount. But the authors go on to explain why that was and explain that if you control for real participation in the test then it is significant.
I didn't. There is no context there. It's not the whole group that were not reduced. Read the sentence again:
> food allergy was lower in the group introduced to allergenic foods early but the difference was not statistically significant
Group introduced to allergenic foods early. And of course if you control for kids that don't already display an allergy at the age that they're introducing it, you're going to have a reduced rate of allergy.
There's a reason they're saying it's not statistically significant...
Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's the opposite. The advice we were given was that it was very important that their first encounter with the allergens was to eat them, and not to allow skin contact or anything before that. This meant that with my youngest we had no peanuts in the house until she was old enough to eat solid food, and peanut butter was the first food she ate. It's still her favourite food!
> we had no peanuts in the house until she was old enough to eat solid food That seems like overkill. I can't imagine having peanuts or peanut butter in the pantry is going to meaningfully affect a 2 month old infant.
It wasn't about them not being in the house - it was about not eating them, and particularly not feeding them to her 2 year old sister. We didn't throw them away - we just didn't buy any as we weren't going to be eating it for a while.
Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is. OP took a sentence out of context that said that overall food allergies across the whole group were not reduced by a statistically significant amount. But the authors go on to explain why that was and explain that if you control for real participation in the test then it is significant.
I didn't. There is no context there. It's not the whole group that were not reduced. Read the sentence again: > food allergy was lower in the group introduced to allergenic foods early but the difference was not statistically significant Group introduced to allergenic foods early. And of course if you control for kids that don't already display an allergy at the age that they're introducing it, you're going to have a…
It was statistically insignificant among the whole early introduction group. This includes everyone who may have been randomised into that group but then didn't follow the (quite onerous) regimen that we were given. This was a full schedule of when different foods had to be fed to the baby and how much. We'd have to record whether they had eaten the amount required and so on. Among those who did follow it, the results were significant. Most importantly, there were zero cases of peanut allergy in that group.
More details are in the paper itself: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1514210
Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, avoidance is more effective than vaccination in preventing you from getting the flu, but that’s not the point of getting vaccinated.
How does one practically avoid flu exposure?
The same way you avoid exposure to anything. Stay home, don’t go near sick people, etc. The point is that in the event that you are somehow exposed, it’s better to be vaccinated than not.
I wouldn’t tell you to not trust the advice of your doctor. But I would tell you that there is an always argument both ways for something like this. A different doctor may feel differently, and sometimes doctors change their minds when given a bit of pushback. It might be worth asking about the possibility of oral immunotherapy in addition to avoidance, rather than as a substitute for it.
Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
We asked about swim lessons and were told avoidance is the best way to prevent drowning.
Swim lessons don't require you to swim every day for the rest of your life
Preventing drowning doesn’t require you to check every food item for bodies of water for the rest of your life, nor trusting everybody else in your kid’s school not to bring a swimming pool for lunch.
Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies
#249“Supervised by select paediatric hospitals, eligible babies will be given gradually increasing doses of peanut powder each day for at least two years, to reduce sensitivity.”
Wouldn’t this effectively mean that some newborns would be inflamed for a prolonged period of time?