A REAL HANDFUL Allergy to peanuts is hard to beat. A study shows that allergic people who methodically increase their peanut intake from a trace to more than 20 peanuts a day over two years are apt to relapse if they fail to maintain some regular consumption.
Peanut allergy is proving a tough nut to crack. Many people seem able to overcome the allergy by consuming tiny-but-increasing amounts of the legume daily for months or years. But the protection often evaporates if they fail to keep eating peanuts regularly, a new study shows. Twenty people with the allergy could eat a handful of peanuts after two years of bit-by-bit consumption, but 17 of them relapsed after avoiding peanuts for several months and then trying to eat some.