Feeding babies peanut butter could prevent allergy long-term, study finds

Introducing peanuts into babies' diets early could protect them against developing an allergy as a teenager, research has shown.

A study from King's College London found eating peanuts early and regularly reduced the risk of developing an allergy in adolescence by 71%.

Professor Gideon Lack, who led the study, said the intervention "will make a remarkable difference to future generations" and cause peanut allergies to plummet.

“Decades of advice to avoid peanuts has made parents fearful of introducing peanuts at an early age.

"The evidence is clear that early introduction of peanut in infancy induces long term tolerance and protects children from allergy well into adolescence."

The researchers said peanuts can be introduced when babies are four months old at the earliest, in the form of a soft pureed paste or peanut puffs.

Initial research by the team involved half of participating children and babies regularly eating peanut until they were five years old, whilst the other half of the group weren't given any peanuts in that period.

This stage of the study found early introduction of peanuts reduced the risk of developing an allergy at five years old by 81%.

The study then followed up with the children who had taken part in first study, advising them all to eat as many peanut products as they wanted.

They found that 15.4% of those who avoided peanuts as a young child, and 4.4% from the group who had eaten peanuts early on, had peanut allergy at age 12 or older.

Peanut allergies are on the rise, with around 2% of young children affected in North America, UK, Western Europe, and Australia.

The results have shown early introduction could prevent more than 100,000 peanut allergies each year across the world.

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