Review: New Ways to Prevent Allergies in Children May Also Help with Eczema

According to the 2012 guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, “no current convincing evidence exists to recommend specific avoidance of certain foods beyond 4-6 months of age for the prevention of allergy” and that delaying the introduction of these foods may actually increase the chances of developing allergies.

 

This U-turn by pediatricians on highly allergenic foods has led to experimentation with new practices for treating infants considered at high risk for developing food allergies. These practices, including the use of probiotics and the early introduction of allergenic foods, have met with success. The question for the present study is whether or not this success has any impact on a condition commonly associated with food allergies in children with infantile eczema.

 

Eczema or atopic dermatitis is a chronic skin condition that often first appears in the very young and can continue to flare up at various times over the course of one’s life. Usually producing itchy, red patches and scaly, dry and sensitive skin, eczema has no known cure but can be treated with steroid creams, antibiotics and anti-itch drugs. The condition has been found to have a genetic basis and studies have shown that infants with eczema have a much higher risk for developing food allergies.

 

Thus, the question arises, might the new approaches to preventing food allergies in infants help with the treatment of infantile eczema? Research conducted by Susan Waserman of the Division of Clinical Immunology and Allergy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, analyzed the recent clinical trials on allergy prevention and infantile eczema to see if these new treatment options produce positive results. The findings were published in the journal Current Opinion in Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

 

Concerning treatment with probiotics (live microorganisms which provide health benefits to the host), studies have drawn a link between the lack of exposure to a diverse range of microbes during infancy and subsequent development of allergic responses, and thus, researchers have investigated the benefits of purposefully adding to an infant’s microbial intake by giving them caplets of probiotics. How does this approach affect the prevalence of eczema? Waserman found that in one study of 454 women and their infants, those who took probiotics during the first 6 months of the infant’s life showed a reduced frequency of sensitization to food antigens and less frequent presentation with atopic eczema.

 

Regarding early introduction of allergenic foods, Waserman found that the Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) 2015 study, determined that early introduction of peanuts to high risk infants with severe eczema, egg allergy or both produced a significant reduction in the percentage of children who developed peanut allergies (an 86 percent reduction in the prevalence of peanut allergy).

According to Waserman, these studies show that the promising results concerning allergy prevention can likely be extended to the treatment of infantile eczema: “As we continue to find answers to the increasing prevalence of food allergy and eczema, current evidence highlights some important advances in primary prevention of food allergy and eczema.”

 

“There still remain unanswered questions and challenges regarding protocols and implementation of current recommendations.”

 

“Although progress has been considerable, the fact is that there are no simple strategies to prevent the development of eczema and food allergy in infants. Physicians must remain informed of the dynamic evidence in allergy prevention to make responsible, informed recommendations to families.”