Many nut-allergic kids can’t spot the culprits

	Tweet

More than one in four children with nut allergies can’t identify the nut that they are allergic to, a new study shows.

The findings suggest that well-meaning parents may be being a little too protective for their children’s own good by banning nuts completely from the home, so children never see what they look like, Dr. Ronald M. Ferdman of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles told Reuters Health.

“Kids just have to get that skill to be able to protect themselves, instead of relying on their parents for the rest of their lives,” he said.

Ferdman and his colleague Dr. Joseph A. Church of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles constructed a “nut box” containing 11 varieties of common nuts under glass. They then asked 100 children, 37 of whom had nut allergies, to name the different types of nuts. Children with nut allergies were also asked to say which of the nuts they could and could not eat.

The children ranged in age from 4 to 19 years. On average, the children were able to identify 2.7 nuts. Eighty-nine percent of the children spotted peanuts in the shell, while 52 percent recognized shelled peanuts.

Children with nut allergies were actually less able than those without allergies to correctly identify shelled and unshelled peanuts, although this may have been because they were slightly younger on average than the non-allergic kids, Ferdman and Church note in their report in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

Among the nut-allergic children, 73 percent either correctly identified the nut they were allergic to, or said that they would not eat any of the nuts. However, 27 percent said that it would be OK for them to eat at least one of the nuts to which they were allergic. Among these 10 children, six identified peanuts in the shell as the nuts they should avoid but said they could eat the shelled peanuts.

“It is possible that the parents of peanut-allergic children did not allow peanuts in their homes and that their children, therefore, never had the opportunity to learn to recognize them,” the researchers note.

The most appropriate approach for the youngest children with nut allergies may be to tell them to avoid nuts completely, Ferdman noted in an interview. However, parents can also teach children how to identify nuts by showing them pictures of the nuts or pointing out different types of nuts in the grocery store.

The findings, he added, “point out that parents really need to teach their child specifically what to avoid.”

SOURCE: Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, July 2006.

RELATED STORIES:
Drug allergy discovery   Kids on cow farms may have fewer allergies   Researchers identify new regulator in allergic diseases   Low serum adiponectin levels predict future risk for asthma in women   Test to improve peanut allergy diagnosis   Anti-IgE Drug Speeds Up Allergy Therapy   Moms Mistakenly Claim Own Food Allergies   Food Allergy Common in Joint Disorder   Molecule That Offers Hope For Future Allergy Treatments Discovered   Adding Proton Pump Inhibitor to Treat Poorly Controlled Asthma in Children Does Not Improve Symptoms   Accelerated infant growth increases risk of future asthma symptoms in children   Getting a Cat Ups Allergy Risk in Adults

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]