The News
Adults with peanut allergies may be able to reduce their risk by slowly acclimatizing to peanut protein, a trial suggested.
Scientists realized relatively recently that parents could reduce a child’s chance of developing a peanut allergy by exposing them to small amounts during infancy, a discovery that forced a U-turn in parenting advice in much of the world.
But it wasn’t known whether the same was true for adults, whose immune systems are more developed. Scientists gave 21 subjects the equivalent of 2.5% of a peanut daily before building the doses up. Some suffered a reaction and dropped out, but 14 ended up able to eat five peanuts safely.
One man told the BBC his allergy had almost killed him, but he now eats peanuts every day.
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