Monday, October 27, 2014

Peanut Dust


How would you react if I told you that one of the reasons your child has a peanut allergy was because you did not dust properly when he/she was a baby? Well, this is not entirely the case. Researchers at King’s College London in collaboration with the University of Manchester and the University of Dundee found a strong connection between exposure to peanut protein in household dust during infancy and the development of peanut allergy in children genetically predisposed to a skin barrier defect.


Peanut allergies are defiantly one of the more common food allergies in the United States rounding out at about 2% of the population.  Many who have come to develop any food allergies have suffered from severe eczema at one point in their early years, particularly from peanut allergies. Understanding of eczema has developed with the discovery of the FLG gene, which codes for the skin barrier protein Fiaggrin. Mutations in this gene causes an impaired skin barrier which is hypothesized to predispose the body to develop allergic responses since allergens could penetrate the skin easier. This study looked at the amount of peanut protein children in the first year of life were exposed to in household dust. This was done by measuring the peanut in the dust vacuumed from the living room sofa.
577 children from the ages 8-11 were assessed for peanut allergy and their DNA was checked for the FLG mutation. It was found that a three-fold increase in peanut house dust exposure during infancy was associated with a three-fold increase in risk of school-age peanut allergy. However, there was no significant effect of environmental peanut exposure in children without FLG mutations since only one in five children with peanut allergy had an FLG mutation.

I find this article vastly fascinating since these findings are an example of how an individual's response to their environment can be modified by their genes. With this study raises the possibility of identifying children with the FLG mutation and altering their environment to prevent the development of the peanut allergy. 

1 comment:

  1. Definitely interesting, particularly when entertaining the scenario of significantly decreasing the amount of people with peanut allergies. It would be awesome to identify people with the FLG mutation and begin from there.

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