Allergy to peanut is a fairly rare disease. It manifests in about ½ a percentage of the population. It can be very problematic illness, however, because it is something that can lead to serious consequences including death.
According to The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, peanuts are the single biggest cause of food related death. It is not well know why peanut allergy develops. It is thought, however, that genetic factors are involved as with other allergies. It has been discovered that delayed exposure to peanuts as a child is one factor that can lead to peanut allergies.
Treatment
Treatment of peanut allergies is a difficult issue. Drug companies have tried to come up with a cure but have not been apple to release any product because they have been caught in legal battles. For children there is a better change to fight the allergy than for adults. Therefore, experiments have been conducted with small amounts of peanut introduced to the subject with gradually increasing amounts. This has provided positive results with patients able to get desensitized to the peanuts. Therefore, it might be preferable to use the desensitization technique than to live with a peanut allergy. This is because obtaining a tolerance to peanuts lasts for the rest of your life eliminating the need to constantly be careful not to accidentally eat them.
Other Possibilities
In 2007, the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University made an announcement that they had developed an allergen free peanut. This new product contains none of the allergy causing substances. Maybe this could be a solution to the problem of peanut allergies. However, using these kinds of products on a large scale might make peanut allergies more common because the possibilities of developing resistance would become smaller.
