- A new study reports that about 20 percent of U.S. adults who have peanut allergies developed them after age 18.
- They note that adults are less likely to receive a diagnosis with the condition because doctors aren’t on the lookout for this allergy in adults.
- They add that symptoms and treatments for adults with peanut allergies are similar to children with the condition.
Nearly 1 in 5 adults in the United States who have peanut allergies developed them after the age of 18, a new study from the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology suggests.
This represents more than 800,000 adults, a surprising figure for an allergy typically thought to primarily present itself in children.
Adults were also less likely to be diagnosed than children were, perhaps because medical professionals are not as primed to look for peanut allergies in adults and adults are less likely to seek out doctors, the research suggests.
While no one knows exactly how adult-onset allergy to peanuts happens, there are theories, said Dr. Phil Lieberman, an allergist in Tennessee who is the chair of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Food Allergy Committee.
“I suspect that the majority of the patients who had adult-onset food allergy had oral allergy syndrome,” Lieberman told Healthline. “It occurs when patients who are pollen allergic develop symptoms to fruits and nuts over time. This would be expected to cause patients to develop symptoms to peanuts in adulthood that were not there in childhood. This is supported by the fact that those responders with adult-onset food allergy were more likely to have environmental allergies than those with childhood-onset.”
Regardless, if you do suspect you might have a late-developing peanut allergy, it’s important to see an allergist.
“The study shows that there are many more adults who report having a peanut allergy than there are who are actually diagnosed by an allergist as having a peanut allergy,” said Dr. Katie Marks-Cogan, a pediatric and adult allergist in California and co-founder of Ready, Set, Food, a service that promotes early childhood allergen exposure. “Seeing a board certified allergist is the best way to find out if you have a true peanut allergy, so I’d recommend seeing one if you have any symptoms when you eat peanuts.”
Source: healthline