4 ms·

>Deaths from peanut allergies are real, and living with the problem can be terrifying. Compounding the tragedy is knowing that America’s epidemic of peanut alle

by soperj 2y ago

>Deaths from peanut allergies are real, and living with the problem can be terrifying. Compounding the tragedy is knowing that America’s epidemic of peanut allergies is a largely avoidable consequence of our policy of peanut abstinence. We keep getting these articles based on 2 peanut studies that specifically only included Jewish children from Israel and England, the ones in Israel had the peanuts early, and the ones in England did not. One study being under 100 children, and one over 1000. Based on these studies Australia changed their recommendations and the number of people introducing their children to peanuts before the age of 1 went from 26% to 85% by 2018. This had _no_ effect on allergy rates to peanuts. They still remain the same. As an aside, my wife is allergic to peanuts, we have no peanuts in our house, and our kids didn't try peanuts until after the age of 7. None of them have peanut allergies.

kqr 2y ago
This is somewhat reassuring. We have the same problem with our children (they have not tried the allergen because we cannot even accidentally get it into our home) except with sesame, which is an equally annoying thing to be mortally allergic to!
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
We are in DIRE fucking need of prominent, loud, and substantial public funding for reproducibility studies, and regulations around reporting on scientific discoveries/studies. There are so many of these communities of folks who have completely gone off the map regarding some aspect of science, and a sufficient amount of research on your part will lead back to 1 or 2 studies by one doctor who had an axe to grind or money to make, and it's since spawned an utter juggernaut of misinformation and fraud.
- altruios 2y ago
  I am amazed you are being downvoted for advocating increased funding for reproduceable studies. The Replication crisis is real, and can be avoided if more effort is put in not to discover something new, but instead to verifying the old information we base new questions/studies on.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    > I am amazed you are being downvoted for advocating increased funding for reproduceable studies. I'm not. There are a large contingent of people on here who scream socialism/communism anytime you suggest the government do anything, even when it's demonstrably addressing an existing crisis that's skullfucking our society. They'll probably downvote this one too because they really don't like when people point out their "objective" and "rational" thinking is neither of those things.
    - glenra 2y ago
      To be fair to anyone so motivated: the word "public" wasn't necessary to the comment. Loud, substantial private funding for such an endeavor would presumably solve the problem just as well. (They also might be thinking that "regulations around reporting" pose a substantial free speech issue.)
      - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        One would counter that if private money was at all interested in resolving this problem they may have done so at any time in the last 3 decades, which is only the most severe the crisis has been, not it's full duration. One would also counter that regulations regarding the accuracy of speech existed in 1987 and were by most accounts, pretty effective at keeping news informative and balanced, as opposed to after those regulations were retired and we got politics being covered like sports and the political divide becoming larger and larger as time goes on because making people angry and scared of the Other is pretty profitable, while getting them balanced, informed coverage is both more expensive and not as appealing to the consumer.
      - altruios 2y ago
        I think you presume too much of private entities, which would always put their financial interest first (lead gasoline science studies come to mind, tobacco/cancer obfuscation... etc)... you can't trust a private company not to act in its own financial interests, that's not how they work. At least with a public entity, you should be able to publicly audit what's happening, and with public funding to answer to, the public's interests and the proposed entity's financial security are aligned properly. in an ideal world...
- autoexec 2y ago
  > We are in DIRE fucking need of prominent, loud, and substantial public funding for reproducibility studies, and regulations around reporting on scientific discoveries/studies. there's got to be a market for someone to create a new journal that only accepts/publishes research that has been independently reproduced at least a few times and has an actually meaningful peer review process and standards. It could serve as a repository for research that we can actually put some measure of faith in because right now companies can just pay for research with whatever results they want to see in a headline, and there's basically no accountability for scientists that put out garbage research. Everyone seems to agree that "publish or perish" is a problem, but as long as people are forced to constantly put something out there it'd be nice to see more effort put into validating/invalidating prior research. It'd be better than just adding to the pile of never-replicated garbage that nobody can trust but everyone goes on to cite anyway.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    > there's got to be a market for someone to create a new journal that only accepts/publishes research that has been independently reproduced at least a few times and has an actually meaningful peer review process and standards. I doubt it. All the incentives for all parties are in the exact opposite direction: - A journal gains readership based on how many studies it can publish. If it barely publishes any, no one will buy it. Would you buy a magazine that didn't publish anything? - The doctors and their backers in turn wouldn't give a shit if they got declined by this theoretical journal. They get declined all the time for far less legitimate reasons, most of the time submitting to as many journals as they can, since they will be declined by the majority. - The journal itself if it's too choosy and lacks the existing brand recognition is incentivized to publish anything it can, which is why most startup journals are even worse than the existing (bad) ones.
hibikir 2y ago
Similar things happen when looking at treenut allergies. I have a child allergic to a whole lot of them, even though our first incident requiring medical intervention occurred before age 1. I have no problem believing that severe allergies weren't all being undiagnosed in the past, but we are way too quick to believe studies that match priors, even if there's evidence that the intervention's effects are, at best overblown. Science is hard, life sciences doubly so. We need to be far more comfortable with wide error bars than we are.
albedoa 2y ago
Can you cite your stats? This study[1] by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia says there was a 16% reduction in peanut allergies in 2018–2019 after the guideline changes compared to a decade earlier. This 2024 Australian program[2] for introducing babies to peanuts early is inspired by this 2022 US report[3] about a 22% remission rate in babies who were introduced to peanut powder compared to 2% who received the placebo. 1. https://www.mcri.edu.au/news-stories/decrease-peanut-allergy-among-infants-after-guideline-changes https://www.mcri.edu.au/news-stories/decrease-peanut-allergy... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/02/australia-peanut-allergy-program-daily-dose-remission https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/... 3. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/oral-immunotherapy-peanut-allergy-young-children https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/oral-im...
blagie 2y ago
In this case, the conclusion doesn't even quite support the hypothesis. The level of increase in prevalence from a generation ago is greater than the level of claimed reduction from early exposure today. It's very possible that early exposure is beneficial. It makes sense to me. However, that does not explain why peanut allergies are so much higher now than a century ago. The under-diagnosis hypothesis does not make sense either, since the reactions are so severe. Something is leading to exploding allergies. I can list other hypotheses, at least as strong, including: - Travel and genetics (we co-evolve to local environments; the US is mostly immigrant) - Parasites / hygiene hypothesis - Environmental changes / new industrial-age pollutants And, of course, there are things we don't know about and combination effects. Footnote: Peanuts are native to South America. When the Spanish came, or they were introduced to Europe, we didn't see mass anaphylaxis either, at least as far as I know.
- SHOwnsYou 2y ago
  More people are exposed to peanuts today than they were 100 years ago. What do you think about the possibility that this is similar to rates of other diseases "rising", where really it may be an artifact of access to new populations?
  - blagie 2y ago
    Peanuts were plentiful 100 years ago, and certainly 50 years ago when allergy rates were much lower. There are also striking geographic differences in allergy rates as well between the US and less developed countries (even within genetically identical populations). Anecdotally, I also know a bunch of people who developed allergies (not peanut / treenut, but seasonal) a few years after they moved to the US. It looks like there's something environmental going on. I just don't know what yet.

by soperj 2y ago

kqr 2y ago

This is somewhat reassuring. We have the same problem with our children (they have not tried the allergen because we cannot even accidentally get it into our home) except with sesame, which is an equally annoying thing to be mortally allergic to!

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

We are in DIRE fucking need of prominent, loud, and substantial public funding for reproducibility studies, and regulations around reporting on scientific discoveries/studies. There are so many of these communities of folks who have completely gone off the map regarding some aspect of science, and a sufficient amount of research on your part will lead back to 1 or 2 studies by one doctor who had an axe to grind or money to make, and it's since spawned an utter juggernaut of misinformation and fraud.

altruios 2y ago
I am amazed you are being downvoted for advocating increased funding for reproduceable studies. The Replication crisis is real, and can be avoided if more effort is put in not to discover something new, but instead to verifying the old information we base new questions/studies on.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > I am amazed you are being downvoted for advocating increased funding for reproduceable studies. I'm not. There are a large contingent of people on here who scream socialism/communism anytime you suggest the government do anything, even when it's demonstrably addressing an existing crisis that's skullfucking our society. They'll probably downvote this one too because they really don't like when people point out their "objective" and "rational" thinking is neither of those things.
  - glenra 2y ago
    To be fair to anyone so motivated: the word "public" wasn't necessary to the comment. Loud, substantial private funding for such an endeavor would presumably solve the problem just as well. (They also might be thinking that "regulations around reporting" pose a substantial free speech issue.)
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      One would counter that if private money was at all interested in resolving this problem they may have done so at any time in the last 3 decades, which is only the most severe the crisis has been, not it's full duration. One would also counter that regulations regarding the accuracy of speech existed in 1987 and were by most accounts, pretty effective at keeping news informative and balanced, as opposed to after those regulations were retired and we got politics being covered like sports and the political divide becoming larger and larger as time goes on because making people angry and scared of the Other is pretty profitable, while getting them balanced, informed coverage is both more expensive and not as appealing to the consumer.
    - altruios 2y ago
      I think you presume too much of private entities, which would always put their financial interest first (lead gasoline science studies come to mind, tobacco/cancer obfuscation... etc)... you can't trust a private company not to act in its own financial interests, that's not how they work. At least with a public entity, you should be able to publicly audit what's happening, and with public funding to answer to, the public's interests and the proposed entity's financial security are aligned properly. in an ideal world...
autoexec 2y ago
> We are in DIRE fucking need of prominent, loud, and substantial public funding for reproducibility studies, and regulations around reporting on scientific discoveries/studies. there's got to be a market for someone to create a new journal that only accepts/publishes research that has been independently reproduced at least a few times and has an actually meaningful peer review process and standards. It could serve as a repository for research that we can actually put some measure of faith in because right now companies can just pay for research with whatever results they want to see in a headline, and there's basically no accountability for scientists that put out garbage research. Everyone seems to agree that "publish or perish" is a problem, but as long as people are forced to constantly put something out there it'd be nice to see more effort put into validating/invalidating prior research. It'd be better than just adding to the pile of never-replicated garbage that nobody can trust but everyone goes on to cite anyway.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > there's got to be a market for someone to create a new journal that only accepts/publishes research that has been independently reproduced at least a few times and has an actually meaningful peer review process and standards. I doubt it. All the incentives for all parties are in the exact opposite direction: - A journal gains readership based on how many studies it can publish. If it barely publishes any, no one will buy it. Would you buy a magazine that didn't publish anything? - The doctors and their backers in turn wouldn't give a shit if they got declined by this theoretical journal. They get declined all the time for far less legitimate reasons, most of the time submitting to as many journals as they can, since they will be declined by the majority. - The journal itself if it's too choosy and lacks the existing brand recognition is incentivized to publish anything it can, which is why most startup journals are even worse than the existing (bad) ones.

hibikir 2y ago

Similar things happen when looking at treenut allergies. I have a child allergic to a whole lot of them, even though our first incident requiring medical intervention occurred before age 1. I have no problem believing that severe allergies weren't all being undiagnosed in the past, but we are way too quick to believe studies that match priors, even if there's evidence that the intervention's effects are, at best overblown. Science is hard, life sciences doubly so. We need to be far more comfortable with wide error bars than we are.

albedoa 2y ago

Can you cite your stats? This study[1] by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia says there was a 16% reduction in peanut allergies in 2018–2019 after the guideline changes compared to a decade earlier. This 2024 Australian program[2] for introducing babies to peanuts early is inspired by this 2022 US report[3] about a 22% remission rate in babies who were introduced to peanut powder compared to 2% who received the placebo. 1. https://www.mcri.edu.au/news-stories/decrease-peanut-allergy-among-infants-after-guideline-changes https://www.mcri.edu.au/news-stories/decrease-peanut-allergy... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/02/australia-peanut-allergy-program-daily-dose-remission https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/... 3. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/oral-immunotherapy-peanut-allergy-young-children https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/oral-im...

blagie 2y ago

In this case, the conclusion doesn't even quite support the hypothesis. The level of increase in prevalence from a generation ago is greater than the level of claimed reduction from early exposure today. It's very possible that early exposure is beneficial. It makes sense to me. However, that does not explain why peanut allergies are so much higher now than a century ago. The under-diagnosis hypothesis does not make sense either, since the reactions are so severe. Something is leading to exploding allergies. I can list other hypotheses, at least as strong, including: - Travel and genetics (we co-evolve to local environments; the US is mostly immigrant) - Parasites / hygiene hypothesis - Environmental changes / new industrial-age pollutants And, of course, there are things we don't know about and combination effects. Footnote: Peanuts are native to South America. When the Spanish came, or they were introduced to Europe, we didn't see mass anaphylaxis either, at least as far as I know.

SHOwnsYou 2y ago
More people are exposed to peanuts today than they were 100 years ago. What do you think about the possibility that this is similar to rates of other diseases "rising", where really it may be an artifact of access to new populations?
- blagie 2y ago
  Peanuts were plentiful 100 years ago, and certainly 50 years ago when allergy rates were much lower. There are also striking geographic differences in allergy rates as well between the US and less developed countries (even within genetically identical populations). Anecdotally, I also know a bunch of people who developed allergies (not peanut / treenut, but seasonal) a few years after they moved to the US. It looks like there's something environmental going on. I just don't know what yet.