As many as two-thirds of pediatricians in America do not follow the newest guidelines about how to introduce peanuts to children for allergy prevention, according to a new report.
The report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that 93% of pediatricians are aware of the new guidelines, which were released in 2017 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
But less than 30% of pediatricians are following the guidelines in full, according to the report.
The guidelines issued in 2017 call for assessment of peanut-allergy risk and introduction of peanut- containing foods in the diet of infants at 4-6 months of age, in efforts to prevent peanut allergy. This is a reversal from 20 years ago, when the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that peanut should be avoided until the child is 3 years old.
The survey data included responses from 1,781 pediatricians found that common barriers to guideline implementation included lack of clinic time, conducting in-office supervised feeding of peanut-containing food, performing peanut allergy testing, concerns about newness of the guidelines, and parental fear of allergic reactions.
