When you are trying to find a solution for a global surge in food allergies, you go to the centre of the problem.
And that’s Melbourne. The world’s most liveable city also has the world’s highest reported rate of food allergies.
Global experts converged on the city on Monday for the International Congress of Immunology, as Australian researchers lead a worldwide push to shift the advice to new parents on how to best protect high-risk babies from developing food allergies.
Australia’s Centre for Food & Allergy Research guidelines for infant feeding now advocates for the gradual introduction of peanut paste, egg and milk shortly after solids at about six months of age but not before four months.
And the US and Europe are taking our lead, with an international consensus imminent, said Professor Katie Allen from Murdoch Childrens Research Institute.
“We are leading the way because we have a massive problem,” Professor Allen said. “Australia does appear to be the food allergy capital of the world.”
Melbourne parents have remained so afraid of allergic reaction some have been parking outside the Royal Children’s Hospital to give their babies peanut butter, she said.
There are a handful of theories about what has caused the dramatic rise in food allergy in developed countries over the past 20 years, Professor Allen said.
Being too clean, distance from the equator or vitamin D deficiencies, and genetics, were among the theories explored at the conference on Monday.
Professor Hamida Hammad, from Belgium, has been studying how children exposed to dust on dairy farms are protected against asthma and allergies, in the hope of creating a vaccine.
Her team found most children exposed to farm dust produced a protein called A20, which seemed to protect them from inflammation responses. Day-care centres are already being built on farms in Europe to ensure small children have exposure to farm material, she said.
“Children from a very low age, before the age of two, need to be exposed to certain environmental triggers like farm dust or bugs and this will induce the increased expression of this protein A20 in their structural cells in their lungs,” Professor Hammad said.
Professor Allen said the Belgian work supported research that showed babies who grow up in a home with siblings and dogs are less likely to develop allergies.
Another “piece of the puzzle” was vitamin D and the possibility that Australians were more prone to allergy because we are the only developed country in the world that does not add it to our milk.
“We’ve found in previous studies that children with food allergy are more likely to have low vitamin D levels,” Professor Allen said.
[Source:-The Age]
