BALTIMORE, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Children who have outgrown peanut allergy need to eat peanuts regularly to maintain the tolerance, researchers at Johns Hopkins Children's Center report.
In a study published in the November issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the research team recommends children who outgrow the allergy eat concentrated forms of peanut products, such as peanut butter, shelled peanuts or peanut candy, at least once a month.
"The exact mechanism by which peanut allergy may recur is not known, but we know that the children in our study who ate concentrated forms of peanut frequently had a considerably lower chance of having a recurrence of their allergy," says Dr. Robert Wood, the study's senior author and a pediatric allergist at the center.
In the study, Wood and colleagues at Arkansas Children's Hospital evaluated 68 children between the ages of 5 and 21 who outgrew a peanut allergy.
The researchers found 34 children who consumed concentrated peanut products frequently, and 13 children who ate peanut products in limited amounts but passed the oral peanut challenge, continued to tolerate peanut.
