Prevention of food allergic in infants and children (Systematic review)

Prevention of food allergic in infants and children (Systematic review)
Ailar Hashtroodi,^1,* Mojgan Yaqoobi,² Zahra Baradaran,³ AmirAli Moodi Ghalibaf,⁴
1. Student Research Committee, Health Services Management Department, Faculty of Health, Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, Qazvin, Iran
2. Midwifery Department, Faculty of Medical Science, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran
3. Student Research Committee, Torbat Heydariyeh University of Medical Sciences, Torbat Heydariyeh, Iran
4. Student Research Committee, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran
Introduction: Food allergies occur in children and infants for different reasons in the world. In addition to genetics, food is another factor for development of allergies. Understanding the impact of food and environmental factors is the most important issue because food allergies in the early years of life lead to allergies in later life
Methods: This systematic review article was performed within articles published at PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, SID and web of science from 2010 to 2020. The keywords were "Prevention", "food allergic", "infants" and "children". The articles were chosen from Persian and English. 170 articles were found, and the search protocol was limited to access the full text and last ten years, it was limited to 154 articles, and a number of them by reading titles were removed.
Results: Finally, 120 studies were conducted. In several articles, cow and egg milk allergies were identified as the most common allergies. A number of articles have highlighted the importance of breast milk because breast milk provide needed proteins and vitamins for baby, also it is essential for growth and strengthening of the immune system, they have showed it has very important impact on preventing food allergies. The other articles emphasized on the importance of vitamin D deficiency during infancy and exposure to antibiotics in the first year of life. Some of the studies have investigated food allergies in infancy lead to atopic dermatitis and asthma in childhood.
Conclusion: Premature and breastfed infants are at higher risk for food allergies than adults. Therefore, vitamin D deficiency and exposure to antibiotics could maximize the risk of allergies. This seems that breastfeeding would prevent allergies in infants if mother's diet and her immune system improved.
Keywords: Prevention, Food allergy, Children, infants