Can peanut butter prevent peanut allergy?

Parents, take note! The best way to prevent your kids from developing peanut allergy may actually be to feed them a peanut-containing snack, a new study suggests.
Early consumption of a peanut-containing snack by infants who are at high-risk for developing peanut allergy prevents the subsequent development of allergy, researchers said.
The study led by Professor Gideon Lack at Kings College London, is the first randomised trial to prevent food allergy in a large cohort of high-risk infants.
Peanut allergy can cause adverse reactions ranging from development of hives and abdominal pain to severe anaphylaxis that requires immediate treatment with epinephrine.

Because of the risk of anaphylaxis, children with peanut allergy are advised to avoid peanut in their diet and must carry an epinephrine autoinjector kit with them for use in event of a severe reaction.
Peanut allergy is an aberrant response by the body's immune system to harmless peanut proteins in the diet.

The new study was based on a hypothesis that regular eating of peanut-containing products, when started during infancy, will elicit a protective immune response instead of an allergic immune reaction.
The study enrolled over 600 children between 4 and 11 months of age at high risk for peanut allergy to test whether consumption or avoidance of peanut until age 5 years would result in decreased incidence of peanut allergy.

Children in the peanut consumption arm of the trial ate a peanut-containing snack-food at least three times each week, while children in the peanut avoidance arm did not ingest peanut-containing foods.
The infants enrolled in the study had severe eczema and/or egg allergy, which put them at high risk of developing peanut allergy. Of the children who avoided peanut, 17 per cent developed peanut allergy by the age of 5 years.
Remarkably, only 3 per cent of the children who were randomised to eating the peanut snack developed allergy by age 5.
Therefore, in high-risk infants, sustained consumption of peanut beginning in the first 11 months of life was highly effective in preventing the development of peanut allergy.

"For decades allergists have been recommending that young infants avoid consuming allergenic foods such as peanut to prevent food allergies," Lack, the lead investigator of the study, said.
"Our findings suggest that this advice was incorrect and may have contributed to the rise in the peanut and other food allergies," said Lack.
The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.