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New Study to Enhance Prevention of Peanut Allergy in Pediatric Practices

The Center for Food Allergy & Asthma Research at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago announced the launch of the Intervention to Reduce Early Peanut Allergy in Children (iREACH) study. iREACH is a five-year randomized clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health, aimed at assessing and improving pediatric clinician adherence to the 2017 prevention of peanut allergy guidelines developed by an expert panel sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The Prevention of Peanut Allergy guidelines were developed based on the landmark Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study, which showed that consuming peanut-containing foods during infancy significantly reduced the incidence of peanut allergy. Building on LEAP, the iREACH study has two principal objectives: to determine the effectiveness of iREACH interventions, both the clinical decision support and education, in increasing adherence to the guidelines among pediatric clinicians and to determine the effectiveness of iREACH in decreasing the incidence of peanut allergy by age 2.5 years.

"Through supporting pediatric clinicians in adhering to the guidelines, we have an achievable way to prevent peanut allergy and reduce incidence, which is exciting," Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, the study’s principal investigator, notes.

The prevalence of peanut allergy remains alarmingly high in the United States. Currently, around 2.2% of the pediatric population has been diagnosed with peanut allergy, a three-fold increase within the past two decades. Peanut allergy accounts for one-quarter of pediatric food allergy and severe food allergies are the most common among children with peanut allergy. The iREACH study will help combat these trends. In collaboration with the Pediatric Practice Research Group at Lurie Children’s Hospital, more than 30 pediatric practices from urban, suburban, and rural Illinois communities are participating in the study. The group aims to follow approximately 10,500 infants until they reach 2.5 years of age by studying the pediatric clinician’s use of the guidelines through EHRs and surveys.

For more information about the study, please visit ireachstudy.com.