Dr Victor Turcanu, Department of Women & Children's Health and Peter Gorer Department of Immunobiology, talks us through his work in paediatric allergy.

The environmental factors driving the worldwide increase in food allergies are unclear. They possibly involve dual exposure to allergens, levels of sun exposure linked to vitamin D, microbiome-driven effects or other mechanisms. Globally, it is not implausible that different drivers of food allergy could interact in different countries. Nevertheless, until these causal factors are better understood, early interventions aiming to establish oral tolerance may provide an effective way to prevent peanut and possibly other food allergies and to decrease the window-of-risk when children may develop allergic sensitisation to foods due to the absence of a protective immune response. Thus, the recent LEAP (Learning Early About Peanut allergy) and LEAP-On studies achieved a high level of peanut allergy prevention by early introduction of peanuts in the infants diet.