Evaluation of the epidemiology of peanut allergy in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Aims: To describe the epidemiology of peanut allergy (PA) in the UK over the last three decades.

Methods: PA patients were identified from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink between 1987 and 2015. Incidence and prevalence of PA were compared between 2000 and 2015. Prevalence and relative risk (RR) of atopic comorbidities, anaphylaxis, adrenaline prescriptions versus matched controls were calculated.

Results: Point prevalence of PA in the entire population and those <18 years increased from 31 to 202 and 116 to 635 per 100,000, respectively, between 2000 and 2015. Incidence increased from 8.6 to 18.2 per 100,000. Incidence in 2015 was 105 cases per 100,000 aged 0–4 years versus 13.4 per 100,000 aged 5+ years. Anaphylactic events affected 1.2% of the cases and 0.007% of the controls. The rate of adrenaline prescriptions was 5,910 per 100,000 person-years for PA patients. RRs for asthma, eczema and allergic rhinitis in PA patients versus controls were 4.5 (95% CI 4.2–4.8), 3.2 (3.1–3.4) and 2.6 (2.4–3.0), respectively.

Conclusions: The prevalence and incidence of PA increased markedly over the study period. PA was associated with atopic conditions and anaphylaxis. PA patients had increased adrenaline prescriptions.

KEYWORDS:

• Peanut
• allergy
• anaphylaxis
• epidemiology
• atopy

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Amr Radwan, Andrea Vereda & Ben Skeel for their insight and helpful advice.

Declaration of interest

J de Vries is an independent consultant to Aimmune Therapeutics Inc. L Scott, BI Jones, TR Berni, and ER Berni are employed by, and CJ Currie is a director of Pharmatelligence, a research consultancy receiving funding from Aimmune Therapeutics Inc. for the submitted work. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was funded by Aimmune.