Reply To: Chat thread – Monday 30th December

[tootsci]

@NorthernLass Yes, it goes back to my previous comment that the immune system is still not fully understood, and advice was given on what we knew at that time. Frustrating I know, but allergies, and also autoimmune diseases such as lupus, are still a massive area that more research is needed in.

As an aside, there are likely many other factors that contributed to the the incidence of peanut allergy in Israel being lower e.g. levels of Vitamin D due to increased sun exposure (Vitamin D plays a role in your immune system), different genetic backgrounds that affect how your immune system recognises things, exposure to particular infections we don’t see here and more. But the use of peanut-containing weaning snacks in Israel giving that early exposure was eventually thought to be enough of a factor that it lead to the change in guidelines.