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Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

bbc.com

71–80 of 249 posts

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#71

I always think about the low incidence of peanut allergies in developing countries and wonder if the mother's diet during pregnancy has an effect on allergies in children? Has this been researched? Because instead of introducing peanuts and eggs to babies, introducing it to mothers is almost a no brainer.

Indian kids are fed peanuts as early as possible

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#72
post #34

When I worked at a wilderness summer camp I had a kid in my group that was deathly allergic to peanuts, so weeks before we had to rid the camp of them. He was about 13, and said when he was little they did that scratch allergy test on his arm and he was in a coma for six months. He carried and Epipen around but told me not to stress. If someone ate a snickers then touched a door knob, and he touched it days later he…

Sounds like obvious bullshit. His story I mean, not yours. If his allergy were as bad as he claimed he would be a bubble boy or dead. It's not as if all of society around him could be cleansed of peanut residue as the camp supposedly was. If he went anywhere public without a bubble then by his account he'd be dead.

He was extremely careful not to touch much, and after meeting his parents they lived in constant terror

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#73
post #34

When I worked at a wilderness summer camp I had a kid in my group that was deathly allergic to peanuts, so weeks before we had to rid the camp of them. He was about 13, and said when he was little they did that scratch allergy test on his arm and he was in a coma for six months. He carried and Epipen around but told me not to stress. If someone ate a snickers then touched a door knob, and he touched it days later he…

Slight tangent: How do people with an allergy that severe find out they have an allergy? For example people who know even someone's breath after eating peanuts would threaten their lives. Accidental exposures are likely much worse than that, so how do you end up learning about this severity without dying in the first place? Just running a full allergy test after an unexplained exposure to traces of "something", or... ?

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#74
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…

Is this effective and available for milder chronic hayfever and runny,partially blocked nose, generally speaking?

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#75
post #60

It is not well known but this also works for adults too. I’m 28 and recently completed oral immunotherapy therapy for my extremely severe peanut allergy. I used to go anaphylactic from single milligram exposure and now I’m eating multiple peanuts a day. As an adult you have to go slower and be more careful but absolutely can be done and is life changing.

What a relief! Thank you for sharing.

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#76
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…

Is this effective and available for milder chronic hayfever and runny,partially blocked nose, generally speaking?

I've heard that consuming honey from your local variety of bees can help - but the evidence base isn't great [1]

[1] https://www.honeyshoney.co.uk/blogs/news/local-honey-and-hay...

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think parent is hinting at a conspiracy, and more at "natural" selection based on omnipresence of peanuts. With no knowledge about how i goes for babies, the question would be how a 2~3 month allergic kid [0] would react to peanuts, including when not directly ingested. If it had adverse effects it would go along the line of what parent is describing. [0] can kids that age already be allergic to peanuts ?

I was not hinting at any conspiracy, and my comment wasn't directed toward Israel in particular (knowing nothing about the study that the top-level comment alluded to). I was facetiously pointing out that a population where everyone eats peanuts at a young age is likely to be allergy-free if only due to the fact that those with peanut allergies would die, and therefore would no longer be allergic to peanuts. A naive…

For the record, I don't agree with your edit saying that your original comment deserved the downvotes it got. I'm not sure if people just completely missed the point you were making, or if, as I think likely, the current political climate around Israel/Palestine led to a few pro-Israel people wrongly assuming you were being anti-Israeli, but either way I'm glad you contributed and were able to clarify what you meant.

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#78
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the parent of twins. Their mother ate multitudes of peanut M&M's and similar items when pregnant. One twin has zero peanut allergies, the other one has deadly allergies and we are at the ER at least once a year from food contamination.

On the assumption that such allergies have a genetic component, presumably the twins aren't identical?

It's also possible for things which do have genetic components to _also_ have environmental triggers, so its not impossible that, for example, identical twins who happened to get different levels of exposure to peanuts in their first year of life based on random luck of which family member ate peanuts near them at which times, or something like that, could lead to different outcomes even if genetics were the reason that both twins were at risk of developing such an allergy.

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#79
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…

Is this effective and available for milder chronic hayfever and runny,partially blocked nose, generally speaking?

Yes it is: https://www.aok.de/pk/magazin/koerper-psyche/haut-und-allerg...

I heard that you can choose between pills every day for a prolonged period OR three injections over a year. Not sure how accurate this is, but every "allergologe" provides this in Germany.

Re: Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies

#80
post #60

It is not well known but this also works for adults too. I’m 28 and recently completed oral immunotherapy therapy for my extremely severe peanut allergy. I used to go anaphylactic from single milligram exposure and now I’m eating multiple peanuts a day. As an adult you have to go slower and be more careful but absolutely can be done and is life changing.

Wonderful to hear - my son took part in a milk desensitisation, which has been really successful - but he also has a good few other food allergies. We haven't yet been able to get him onto other trials, so I was worried that if we didn't do it while he was young, we'd miss the 'window'.

Brilliant to hear it still works well in adulthood - if we can get peanuts, sesame and egg under control - so that he can eat 'May Contain' food, that would be a huge change for him.

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