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Higher maternal intake of peanut, milk, wheat during pregnancy increases child’s allergen tolerance
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SAN DIEGO — Higher maternal intake of peanut, milk and wheat during pregnancy reduced risk for asthma and allergy during mid-childhood, according to data presented here during the 2014 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Annual Meeting.
Supinda Bunyavanich, MD, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and colleagues administered food frequency questionnaires to 1,277 pregnant women during the first and second trimesters. Follow-ups were conducted when children were nearly 8 years old to determine if food allergy, asthma, allergic rhinitis or atopic dermatitis had developed.
Twenty-eight percent of children were sensitive to at least one food allergen, and 5.6% of children had a food allergy.
According to the findings, which are also currently in press in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, mothers with a higher peanut intake during the first trimester reduced their child’s odds of having a peanut allergy by 47%. Higher milk intake during the first trimester was associated with a lower risk for asthma and allergic rhinitis. Children had a lower risk for atopic dermatitis if their mothers had a higher intake of wheat during their second trimester.
“Although many clinicians and researchers believed that maternal dietary restrictions during pregnancy and lactation … could prevent atopic disease … Recent guidelines acknowledge that there are insufficient data to support such restrictions. In fact, evidence is accumulating that early introduction of peanut, egg, wheat, milk, and fish to the infant diet — rather than delay or avoidance — may be helpful in inducing tolerance rather than allergy,” Bunyavanich and colleagues wrote in the study.
For more information:
Bunyavanich S. Abstract 693. Presented at: AAAAI 2014; Feb. 28-March 4, 2014; San Diego.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.