People who are allergic to a certain type of nut might not be allergic to all kinds of nuts. For example, a person who has a peanut allergy may just be allergic to walnuts and not almonds, a study suggested.
Peanut allergy is not really universal in a sense. Not all types of tree nuts are prohibited to a person with allergies, NBC News reported. "Too often, people are told they're allergic to tree nuts based on a blood or skin prick test," Dr. Christopher Couch, a Phoenix-based allergist who was an allergy/immunology fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School at the time of the study. People will now avoid all of the tree nuts but they might really not be allergic to all. They advised that a person with nuts allergies must get tested to every type of nuts.
The researchers have sampled 109 individuals who have peanut allergy. The skin prick tests showed that individuals are indeed sensitive to other nuts. However, a small amount of the same nut like the tree nuts is fine after being feed to the individuals. More than 50 percent of the people tested were not really allergic to other nuts even though they directly ate it, Couch said. Most people that were allergic to peanuts are not allergic to tree nuts, Web MD stated.
People with peanut allergy can now include in their diet other types of tree nuts like almonds and walnuts. They should not avoid every type of nut just because they found out they were allergic to a kind, said Dr. Matthew Greenhawt, an allergy specialist at Children's Hospital Of Colorado and chair of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) Food Allergy Committee, who worked on the study.
That is because skin prick tests are not as accurate as an oral taking of the food. Even if people who found out they have peanut allergy through a skin test or blood pricking, it might not have the same result when they eat it, explained Dr. Christopher Couch.
