Turning what was once conventional wisdom on its head, a new study suggests that many, if not most peanut allergies can be prevented by feeding young children food containing peanuts beginning in infancy, rather than avoiding such foods.

About 2 percent of American children are allergic to peanuts, a figure that has more than quadrupled since 1997 for reasons that are not entirely clear. There have also been big increases in other Western countries. For some people, even traces of peanuts can be life-threatening.

Breast-Feeding May Have Benefits Later

Breast-feeding has well established short-term benefits, but now researchers have found that its advantages may persist into adulthood.

Many studies of breast-feeding are confounded by social factors — in the United States, for example, people of higher socioeconomic status tend to breast-feed longer. But the population in this study covered a wide-ranging socioeconomic spectrum of women who breast-fed.

The study, in the April issue of Lancet Global Health, began in 1982 with 5,914 newborns. The duration of breast-feeding and the age when the babies began eating solid foods was recorded. Thirty years later, researchers were able to interview and test 3,493 of the original group.