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While noting
that it is “too early to make recommendations of avoidance,” Ms. Willers also
points out that “it’s important for pregnant women to eat healthily, and what is
true for many foods is that too much is never good.”
Maternal
consumption of allergenic foods during pregnancy may increase the risk that the
fetuses they carry would become sensitized to certain allergens. Research on the
topic, however, has been contradictory and inconclusive
Nearly 4,000
expectant mothers from the Prevention and Incidence of Asthma and Mite Allergy
study conducted by the Dutch government completed a dietary questionnaire that
asked how often they consumed vegetables, fresh fruit, fish, eggs, milk, milk
products, nuts and nut products during the last month. Their children’s diets
were also assessed at two years of age, and their asthma and allergy symptoms
were assessed yearly until eight years of age. By the end of the eight years,
the researchers had complete data for 2,832 children and their mothers.
“The only
consistent association between the maternal intake of the investigated food
groups during pregnancy and childhood asthma symptoms until eight years of age
that we found was with nut products,” said Ms. Willers. “Daily versus rare
consumption of nut products—which we assumed was largely peanut butter—was
consistently and positively associated with childhood asthma symptoms, including
wheeze, dyspnea, doctor diagnosed asthma and asthma-associated steroid use.”
The association
remained even after controlling for the child’s diet.
Additionally,
the authors noted, there was a small effect of daily maternal fruit consumption
during pregnancy on reducing the risk of wheeze in children, but other factors
such as health-consciousness and consumption of prenatal vitamins may have been
contributing factors in ways that were undetectable in this study’s design.
“These findings
emphasize the critical important of additional investigations into the
environmental exposures for both mother and child that underlie the pathogenesis
of asthma,” says
John E. Heffner, M.D., past president
of the American Thoracic Society. “It is important, however, to emphasize that
such associations do not confirm a causative linkage.”
While a strict
low-allergen diet is not recommended for most expectant mothers because it risks
both maternal and fetal malnutrition, Ms. Willers notes that peanuts may be the
exception to that general recommendation. “Peanut is a potent allergen, and
peanut allergy is associated with anaphylactic shock and is less likely to be
outgrown than other allergies.”
“Future studies
need to unravel if effects of maternal diet during pregnancy can be attributed
to specific nutrients, specific foods or that consumption of certain foods is
part of a dietary pattern indicative of a healthier lifestyle in general,”
concluded Ms. Willers.
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