Food allergies falling after young children given eggs and peanuts, study says

Foods ‘introduced to the infant diet before the age of 12 months’ can help build up tolerance, study suggests. The rapid rise in food allergies is slowing after parents were advised to give eggs and peanuts to young children to build up tolerance, a study suggests. Analysis from Imperial College London has found that, although allergy cases doubled between 2008 and 2018, they have largely plateaued since 2014.

Researchers say incidence of new cases may have slowed owing to changes in infant feeding guidelines, which no longer recommend delaying the introduction of foods such as peanuts, although they said more evidence is needed to confirm the hypothesis. The estimated number of new cases of probable food allergy in the United Kingdom doubled between from 76 cases per 100,000 people in 2008 to 160 cases per 100,000, but most of the increase occurred up to 2014 before levelling off..