Eating eggs and peanuts during pregnancy may protect the unborn child from food allergies later in life especially if the mother breastfeeds, a US study has found.
Whether mothers should eat these allergenic foods during pregnancy or avoid them has been controversial because of the high rates of childhood food allergies across the Western world.
However researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have shown in mice that breast milk from mothers who consumed allergenic foods prevented food allergy, prevented anaphylaxis and the production of immunoglobulin E - a hallmark of an allergic response - in the offspring.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, showed the breastfeeding transferred protective antibodies, which caused the baby mice to produce allergen-specific regulatory T immune cells that built up tolerance to these allergenic foods.
Human breast milk, fed to mice with immune systems genetically modified to match that of a human was also protective, suggesting that the mouse findings may translate to human infants.