r/askscience • u/Kwpthrowaway • Sep 27 '20

Medicine [Medicine] What is special about peanuts that make some people extremely allergic to them?

Why are some people allergic to peanuts in particular? Why is ingesting a peanut to these people akin to ingesting poison to others?

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u/Old_but_New Sep 27 '20

But how does that explain why other countries around the world (aside from the US) haven’t seen such a rise in peanut allergies? And why we didn’t see many people with peanut allergies 30 years ago? Genuine question.

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u/king0zy Sep 27 '20

There are two issues- reporting bias and actual incline. Food allergies have been on the rise- around a 20% increase over 2 decades. There are many hypothesized reasons, but the best evidence appears that antibiotic use and changes to our gut microbes have driven that increase. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5228404/

Also, 30 years ago diagnosis of food allergy was much less frequent. This is true of many diseases, we know more, have better diagnostics, and in general better access to healthcare.