Meet Lydia and Heath Marvin.

The Marvins are Christian parents of three children. Compelled by their Christian faith, the couple have fostered eight young children since 2020. But they recently learned that they will no longer be able to provide foster children with a stable home after the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families revoked their license to foster.

Their story is yet another warning to every Christian who still thinks neutrality is an option.

The reason? Because they stood on their Christian values, refusing to sign the state’s “gender affirming policy” and “affirm the LGBTQIA+ identity” of foster children, according to WBZ-TV.

State officials officially revoked the Marvins’ foster license in April.

“We had asked: Is there any sort of accommodation, can you waive this at all? We will absolutely love and support and care for any child in our home, but we simply can’t agree to go against our Christian faith in this area. And we’re ultimately told no, you must sign the form as is or else you will be de-licensed,” Lydia explained.

The faithful Christian couple appealed the decision — but lost.

It’s no shock that Massachusetts, a state controlled by Democrats, believes that compelling loving parents to affirm LGBTQ ideology is a reasonable measure to “protect” children. But the Trump administration disagrees. The administration recently sent a letter to the DCF, according to WBZ, calling the policies “deeply troubling, clearly contrary to the purpose of child welfare programs, and in direct violation of First Amendment protections.”

Yes and amen.

But there is another aspect of this story that Christians should find alarming.

RELATED: How Christians can take back what Pride Month stole

A generation ago, Americans were told that embracing the LGBT movement was about tolerance, kindness, and freedom. Christians were promised that the cultural “progress” of the LGBT movement would not encroach on their own families, faith, or freedoms.

“All we want is the right to marry. How will my gay marriage hurt you?” we were told.

But as this Massachusetts case proves yet again, that was never true. It was never about tolerance. Instead, it was always a demand for affirmation and compliance — or else.

The promise — the progressive narrative that “acceptance” is not forced affirmation — was a lie.

When Christian parents — who are willing to sacrifice their resources to love and support young children in dire need — can lose their foster license not for mistreating children but for refusing to affirm an ideology that violates their conscience and faith, it’s clear we’ve moved from freedom of belief to a mandate for belief. The state is no longer neutral. Rather, it’s enforcing a new moral orthodoxy that treats biblical truth and conviction as disqualifying.

The result is as shocking as it is tragic: Children become victimized again.

Children in foster care are already victims of unfortunate and tragic circumstances. They need stability, love, and guidance. But Massachusetts officials have decided to victimize them further, reducing them to casualties of an ideological war. The state has decided to turn away good, compassionate, Christian parents simply because those parents refuse to recite the LGBTQ creed.

That’s not how you protect children. It’s cruelty disguised as compassion.

And it’s especially tragic when you consider the facts on the ground. From the Boston Globe:

There are only 5,500 licensed foster families in the state for the 8,000 to 9,000 kids in the foster system. When DCF can’t find foster parents for kids, they often end up in group homes instead.

The situation unfolding in Massachusetts is the result of a culture that trades truth for ideology. Once a society decides that personal identity outweighs objective reality, every person must bend the knee. Schools, businesses, institutions — and now even foster parents.

The godless progressive agenda demands that all must become temples of affirmation where any hint of dissent is treated as blasphemous heresy.

But Christians cannot — and must not — comply. Love does not require lying. Compassion does not require compromise. To affirm what is false is not mercy but betrayal. God bless Lydia and Heath for standing firm on the solid rock of Christ and His truth in the face of such pressure.

Their story is yet another warning to every Christian who still thinks neutrality is an option. In this cultural moment, there is no third way. Certain state actors have made belief in leftist creeds and ideologies a litmus test for orthodoxy — and biblical truth is deemed heretical.

Still, we should have hope. There has never been a better time to be a Christian than right now. We have always been called to stand apart from the world. We are salt and light.

And no matter how dark it sometimes feels, darkness cannot overcome the light.

​Massachusetts, Christianity, Christian, Trans ideology, Lgbtq ideology, Lydia marvin, Heath marvin, Free speech, Religious liberty, Faith 

There’s no link between antidepressant use and mass shootings, at least not according to a new study published in the journal Psychiatry Research.

Certainly good news for the pharmaceutical industry — but does one study really mean case closed?

The FDA’s own adverse event reporting system shows a consistent link between SSRIs and violence among adults.

It’s a controversial topic that has only become more so in recent years, especially now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the secretary of health and human services under President Trump.

Deplorable questions?

Kennedy has long maintained that antidepressants are causing mass shootings. In an interview with Elon Musk in 2023, for example, Kennedy said, “Prior to the introduction of Prozac [a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor], we had none of these events [mass shootings].”

In his confirmation hearings in February, he told the Senate that the link “should be studied, along with other possible culprits.”

He was asked to clarify his views about antidepressants and mass shootings by his Democrat interrogators, because they were intended to be discrediting just by being uttered aloud — just like his views on water fluoridation, vaccination, and the origins of COVID-19. A whole basket of deplorable ideas.

In short, we’re talking about yet another partisan political issue, even though, surely, we can all agree that mass shootings are terrible and we need to do everything we can to stop them.

Guns, not drugs?

And that includes, obviously, understanding what motivates the shooters.

The new study looked at over 800 mass-shooting incidents that took place between 1990 and 2023. The researchers used publicly available data — news reports, court records, and police statements — to see whether the perpetrators had any history of antidepressant or psychotropic drug use and whether there was a link between suicidality and mass shootings. Previous research had suggested there was such a link.

The researchers found evidence of lifetime antidepressant use in just 34 out of 852 cases and evidence of psychotropic drug use more broadly in 56 cases — just 6.6%. There was no unusual association between suicidality and mass shootings either. Suicide attempts were slightly more common among those with a history of medication use, but the difference was not statistically meaningful.

Population-level data also indicated that antidepressant use among mass shooters was lower than among the general public. If antidepressants were causing mass shootings, we’d expect levels of antidepressant use to be higher, not lower.

QED — or so the researchers believe.

“The vast majority of mass shootings have nothing to do with mental illness,” Ragy R. Girgis, one of the study authors, told medical news website PsyPost.

“The primary modifiable population-level risk factor for mass shootings is firearm availability.”

Prevent people from getting their hands on guns, prevent mass shootings. It’s that simple.

Or is it?

RELATED: Groomed for violence? The dark world of furries and transgenderism in America’s classrooms

Blaze Media illustration

Premature conclusions

There’s a glaring problem: The data simply isn’t good enough to allow any kind of firm conclusion to be reached. The writers at “PsyPost” do at least acknowledge there’s a serious problem, although it doesn’t stop them from trumpeting “new study finds no evidence” in their headline.

Here’s what “PsyPost” says about the reliability of the evidence on offer.

Data were collected from publicly available sources, such as news articles and online records. This approach may miss cases where medication use was not reported or was kept confidential. The study also could not determine whether medications were being taken as prescribed during the attack or whether the person had recently stopped taking them.

Data is often kept confidential, even in the most high-profile cases. Take the Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. At the time of the massacre, which claimed the lives of 14 people and left another 20 wounded, it was widely reported that Harris had been on the powerful new SSRI Luvox, generic name fluvoxamine. The New York Times claimed Harris had been rejected by Marine recruiters just five days before the attack for taking the drug.

There were suggestions that he had tried to go cold turkey as a result and that this might have affected his actions on that dreadful, bloody day. The Times noted that “patients taking Luvox are warned that if combined with other drugs, including alcohol, the drug can cause extreme agitation progressing to delirium, coma and death. The package also carries a warning about suicide.”

While officials said neither shooter had drugs or alcohol in his system at time of death, the coroner refused to say whether they had been tested for antidepressants, including Luvox.

And so we still don’t know, 26 years later, whether antidepressants played a role in the Columbine killings.

Mandatory screenings

Thankfully, there are now some attempts to provide answers. Unsurprisingly, they’re coming from Republican politicians and red states.

Tennessee has become the first state in the U.S. to introduce mandatory screening for psychotropic drugs in mass killings, defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed. In every mass killing that takes place in Tennessee, a detailed toxicology report will be produced and made available to the public. Investigators will study drug interactions in the killer’s body — because drugs have different effects when used in combination, a fact that is poorly understood — and they’ll also consult with providers of mental health services if the killer was receiving treatment.

Here’s something we do know for sure. A clear, well-established link exists between SSRIs and all forms of violent behavior. A huge Swedish study from 2020 that looked at 250,000 people revealed a significant association between SSRI use and violent crime, especially among 15- to 24-year-olds and 25- to 35-year-olds. The study also showed that risk of violence remained elevated up to 12 weeks after discontinuation of the drugs. The FDA’s own adverse event reporting system shows a consistent link between SSRIs and violence among adults.

A tall order

Instead of dismissing the possibility of a link between antidepressant use and mass shootings, we actually need to do some proper research. Gather data and interpret it objectively — meaning dispassionately, without imposing an ideological agenda that fixes the conclusions in advance.

I know that’s a tall order, given how emotional a subject mass murder is — especially mass murder of children — and how unwilling we all are to talk across the growing political divide, but that’s the scientific ideal, and that’s the only way we’re ever going to get to the truth.

As every first-year history undergraduate knows — and I was one, once upon a time — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Let’s not get twisted. Lives are at stake.

​Maha, School shootings, Ssri, Ssris, Antidepressants, Rfk jr, Big pharma, Columbine, Fda, Make america healthy again, Culture 

Protests are fashion statements.

In the 1960s, the hippie movement urged participants to wear their hair long and adorn themselves in bright colors that could be seen on color television newscasts. Today, the social media era has devolved into a new form of lunacy intended to be eye-catching for the sake of internet virality.

Communism has become the ultimate fashion statement.

The No Kings protests were a perfect example of how protests have become liberal runways.

Many attendees dressed in inflatable costumes while others sported the red cloaks from “A Handmaid’s Tale.” A quick internet search bears witness to countless other dramatic protest garbs, from Stormtroopers to Uncle Sam to circus clowns. Those who didn’t make a stop at a Spirit Halloween store before attending the protest wore their outrage on too-clever T-shirts or by swinging homemade signs.

These recent protests were, relatively speaking, more geriatric than other protests of recent past, but even BLM and Antifa protesters have their own distinct style. They can be easily identified by their piercings, dyed hair, and Pride pins. They stick to dark clothing like ripped jeans and scuffed Doc Martens, much like 1990s high schoolers who just discovered grunge music. They often use satanic imagery, like skulls or pentagrams, pretending that their relationship with demonic symbols is ironic and, therefore, “wholesome.”

Another symbol that these protestors cling to is the hammer and sickle. They wear it on T-shirts with a casual attitude. College students have it on their belt buckles, and grad students put stickers of it on their Apple computers.

If you knew nothing about the hammer and sickle, you might think it was a clothing brand. Removed from its context, it has morphed into something completely unrecognizable.

Communism has become the ultimate fashion statement. It’s subversive and feigns intelligence, allowing contrarians to morph their love of punk rock into disdain for “the system.” Their quirky personalities are not personal discrepancies but are instead indicators that they are victims of a normal, Christian society.

RELATED: ‘No Kings’ is the clown show covering for a coup

KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images

In the 1950s, the outcasts wore leather jackets and slicked their hair. In the 2000s, the outcasts wore choker necklaces and sneakers. In 2025, kids are wearing communism. It’s an absurd get-out-of-jail-free card that justifies the behavior of people who feel they don’t fit in.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, almost 35 years ago. For many young people, the fall of the USSR feels as distant as World War I or Napoleon. They didn’t see Mikhail Gorbachev lose control or witness the Berlin Wall fall. Older generations understand that communism is a failed system because they saw its ramifications on television. They knew that tens of millions of Russians were killed by it. They saw Cuba be utterly destroyed by it. They saw their family members deployed to Korea and Vietnam to stop it.

For the modern rebel, communism has no consequences. It’s a political theory, a thought experiment discussed in college safe spaces.

The Communist Party, unfortunately, is alive and growing in America.

The Revolutionary Communists of America are slated to host Marxist schools in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York this year. Membership in the Communist Party USA has jumped from 15,000 in 2023 to 20,000 in 2024. Many of these clubs offer tools and resources to learn about communism on their websites, with one even having a “Marxism IQ” test.

Their cancerous ideology is preying on disenfranchised young people, baiting them with the deadly promises of “equity.”

Wearing a hammer and sickle pin or reading Lenin in public is a way for people to show just how much they care about the ‘oppressed classes.’

At one No Kings protest, the “Denver Communists” had a tent with a sign that read, “Charlie Kirk had it coming.” Workers at the tent posed beside it with thumbs-up, smiling and encouraging people to take photos. A slogan so utterly debauched is intended to get social media recognition. The Denver Communists are actively trying to be noticed for their inflammatory behavior.

It’s the violent progression of a teenager swearing to make his parents angry.

There is a maturity problem in America. Young people are trying to extend their youth in a desperate attempt to circumvent responsibility. The length of time that Gen Z will hold onto one job has sharply declined. Marriage rates have been in a free fall for years. Less than 20% of young people are saving for retirement. College attendance has become the normalized experience of young adulthood, extending the length of schooling while sacrificing years meant for maturity.

This generation has been convinced that their success doesn’t depend on their own work, but on the work of others. To them, communism is the solution they’ve been looking for.

Being a communist is the cool, empathetic thing for young people to support. Wearing a hammer and sickle pin or reading Lenin in public is a way for people to show just how much they care about the “oppressed classes.” It’s a new depth of virtue signaling.

No longer is it enough for radical leftists to support gay marriage or abortion — they must now object to the entire constitutional republic. It’s all for the sake of being rebellious and relevant.

Some people buy expensive handbags. Some people buy rare watches. And today, some people join the Communist Party. After all, it’s just about having the right look.

​Communism, Leftists, Progressivism, Gen z, Protests, Fashion statement, Status symbols 

No drug is as sacrosanct in today’s sexually “liberated” culture as oral contraceptives. But the proliferation of the birth control pill since the 1960s has fostered a number of grave consequences for our society: hook-up culture, delayed marriage, and the destruction of the nuclear family.

None of this would surprise Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. In the early 20th century, she promoted contraception as the mechanism for female emancipation. “Birth control is the first important step a woman must take toward the goal of her freedom,” she wrote. “It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.”

Though the perceived benefits of birth control pills are loudly and publicly celebrated, their costs need to be fully exposed.

Feminist author Betty Friedan agreed, asserting that the pill gave women “the legal and constitutional right to decide whether or not or when to bear children” and established the basis for true equality with men.

Because oral contraception has been touted as a cornerstone of women’s equality and freedom, its health repercussions are rarely called into question. Even Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who regularly wades into controversy by calling for investigations into seed oils and food dyes, remains relatively silent on oral contraceptives.

This is to the detriment of women across the country. As Dr. Sarah Hill demonstrates in “This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: How the Pill Changes Everything,” birth control has had numerous repercussions on women, relationships, and society. She shows that women at the peak of their cycle feel sexier, more outgoing, and more confident with the natural increase in estrogen. And men find them more attractive at that time, too.

More than mere ‘birth control’

As Hill points out, birth control pills do more than just prevent pregnancy: They affect a woman’s hormones more generally — hormones that affect everything from her brain to her fingertips and her overall emotional, mental, and physical health. Many of the women Hill interviewed described feeling emotionally blunted, or as if they were moving through life in a fog, while on the pill.

A woman’s menstrual cycle is often known as the fifth vital sign, and a disruption signals a concern to be addressed, not to be masked.

Birth control is, in fact, “medicated menopause.” While it can be a difficult reality for many to face, studies show that women who no longer menstruate are not as attractive to men, which is why trying to find a mate in the latter years of life can be challenging. The drive to partner up and reproduce is diminished, making marriage less of a necessity and mere companionship more of the goal.

Studies comparing women who use contraception with those who do not reveal that the pill lowers libido, can lead to mood swings or depression, disrupts natural cycles, can cause infertility after discontinuation, interferes with the endocrine system, and can lead to bloating and a gain of nearly five pounds on average. Other studies have found that estrogen-containing pills raise the risk of venous thromboembolism and, to a smaller extent, strokes and heart attacks.

America lags behind

European countries have conducted many tests that demonstrate such effects. A nationwide Danish cohort study of over one million women found higher rates of first antidepressant use and first depression diagnosis among users of contraceptives than nonusers. Another large Danish study found that women who were currently or recently on hormonal contraception were more likely to attempt suicide or die by suicide than women who had never used it.

A Finnish study and a Swedish one produced similar results. A British database shows that the first couple of years of being on the pill brought an increased risk of depression and that women who began using the pill in their teens sometimes had a lasting higher risk.

Few, if any, comprehensive American studies have been conducted, even though about 15% of American women between 15 and 49 use oral contraceptives.

Environmental havoc

Potential problems are not limited to those who ingest the hormones. Synthetic estrogen, an endocrine-disrupting compound used in oral contraceptives, makes its way from America’s toilets to the water supply. Wastewater treatments can reduce, but never fully remove, such psychoactive drugs from drinking water.

U.S. regulators and scientists treat these as “contaminants of emerging concern.” The Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Geological Survey publish methods for measuring the prevalence of such hormones in wastewater and waters used for our drinking supply.

RELATED: Women’s infertility is Big Pharma’s cash cow

simarik via iStock/Getty Images

Male fish begin growing female genitals, and fish populations collapse in water containing the synthetic estrogen from birth control, according to some studies. As RFK Jr. has mentioned, boys are “swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals today, and many of those are endocrine disruptors.”

Though some studies show that typical concentrations of synthetic estrogen in drinking water pose negligible risks to women, perhaps the cumulative exposure to endocrine disruptors affects the sexual development of young males.

Long overdue accountability

RFK Jr. promised to “follow the law regarding access to birth control” during his confirmation process. That could include commissioning the National Institutes of Health to conduct “gold standard science” on oral contraception, as he has sworn to do for other food additives and pharmaceuticals, studies that many European countries have already done.

While calling for restrictions on birth control pills would likely cause a frenzy among many, informed consent is a paramount health priority. Though the perceived benefits of birth control pills are loudly and publicly celebrated (women, you too can have sex like a man!), their costs need to be fully exposed if we are going to restore human health and flourishing among both sexes.

Editor’s note: This article was published originally at the American Mind.

​Opinion & analysis, Robert f. kennedy jr., Rfk jr., Health and human services, Margaret sanger, Planned parenthood, Birth control, Hormonal birth control, Side effects, Danger, Risk, Science, Contraception, Hhs, Seed oils, Food dyes, Toxins, Hormones, Sarah hill, Brain, Depression, Sexual reproductive organs, Strokes, Heart attacks, Environmental protection agency, Regulations, Gold standard, Pregnancy, Big pharma 

Data compiled by the Financial Times reveals birth rates among progressives and conservatives over the past nearly 50 years — and it’s not looking good for the left.

Conservative birth rates have fallen, but conservatives are still reproducing at replacement rates, while progressives are barely reproducing at all.

“What we need is … a turning point, if you will, where we are not just going the same rate of speed as the doctrines of demons, but we are going in the opposite direction,” BlazeTV host Steve Deace says on the “Steve Deace Show.”

“And I think the enemy feared that leaders like Charlie were putting us on such a trend line, especially with their effectiveness towards the youth, and that’s why ‘they’ — demons like to call themselves that — that’s why they murdered him,” he continues.

“And now our hope is that like we’ve seen in the past with martyrs, strike one down and an entire movement comes up behind them,” he adds.

While the left, Deace says, has jumped on the “highway to hell and it’s ‘YOLO,’” conservatives are simply in the slow lane, still heading down the same road.

“We’re traveling the exact same direction. That has to stop. And I think in the younger generations, they sense that. The younger generations on our side. … The hope is we can last long enough to hand it off to them to prove it to us one way or the other,” he tells producer Todd Erzen.

“I mean, if you will not have babies and consecrate them to the Lord, we’re just not serious about the faith we claim to have. This is my lament about the people on the cul de sac and you really just can’t tell in any way a difference between, quite frankly, the families that are happy with the grooming going on and those who claim to believe otherwise,” Erzen says.

“You see all the time: Christian families talk about how expensive kids are. Well, all these families, if you’re paying attention, they’re going on vacation. They have their hobbies. They’re certainly not working, you know, three jobs, man. It’s a choice,” he continues.

“Our excuse-making factories for why our comfort as Christians is going to come before having children and having that be our primary legacy. Giving to the Lord human beings who will worship Him and carry the next generation forward in His name. I mean, it’s a choice,” he adds, “but good luck with that.”

Want more from Steve Deace?

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The New York Knicks evidently want nothing to do with Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner in next month’s mayoral election who defended the extremist slogan “globalize the intifada” earlier this year and has repeatedly been accused of anti-Semitism.

The NBA team sent a legal warning to the socialist assemblyman after he used the team’s iconic branding in a campaign advertisement that not only was published on social media but aired during the Knicks’ season opener on Wednesday night.

The team’s blue and orange basketball logo was featured prominently in the ad — but instead of saying “Knicks,” it said “Zohran.” On social media, the ad was captioned, “This is our year. This is our time.”

In its cease-and-desist letter to Mamdani, obtained by the New York Post, the NBA team suggested that the ad was “likely to mislead the public into believing that the Campaign is affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by, or in some way connected with the Knicks.”

Per the team’s demand, Mamdani’s campaign removed all of the offending ads as of Friday afternoon.

“The NY Knicks have sent NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani a cease-and-desist letter for using the NY Knicks logo to promote his candidacy,” a team spokesperson told the Post. “The Knicks want to make it clear that we do not endorse Mr. Mamdani for mayor, and we object to his use of our copyrighted logo. We will pursue all legal remedies to enforce our rights.”

‘Am I angry that I’m not the one taking down Zohran the socialist and the communist?’

Dora Pekec, Mamdani’s campaign spokeswoman, said in statement obtained by Bloomberg, “Adjustments are being made to the ad, and while the Knicks might not be able to publicly support our campaign, we’re proud to publicly support our NY Knicks.”

RELATED: Democrats face their ‘David Duke moment’ in New York City

Photo by Michael M. Santiago / Staff via Getty Images

The latest Victory Insights poll suggests that Mamdani is poised to become New York City’s next mayor, leading disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) by over 18 percentage points, 46.7%-28.6%. The poll shows that the Republican candidate, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, in trailing in third place with 16.2% support.

In hopes of giving Cuomo a boost over Mamdani, Mayor Eric Adams (D) announced on Thursday that he was endorsing the former governor and did so while wearing a Knicks hat.

“Am I angry that I’m not the one taking down Zohran the socialist and the communist? You’re darn right I am,” said Adams. “But you know what? This city means more to me than anything. And it is time for us as a family to come together.”

“New York can’t be Europe, folks,” continued the mayor. “I don’t know what is wrong with people. You see what’s playing out in other countries because of Islamic extremism.”

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​Sports, New york, New york city, New york knicks, Knicks, Zohran mamdani, Democrat, Leftism, Progressive, Intifada, Politics 

Health experts suggested in years past that mothers with familial predispositions to developing allergies should avoid peanut consumption during pregnancy and breastfeeding and that parents should avoid giving their children peanut products and other common allergens before the age of 3.

According to a National Institutes of Health-backed study published on Monday in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ medical journal, Pediatrics, the strategy of avoidance appears to have been the wrong approach.

Background

After observing the prevalence of peanut allergy among children in Western countries double over the course of a decade, an international team of researchers evaluated studies of peanut consumption and avoidance to figure out which was the better approach.

‘There are less kids with food allergy today than there would have been if we hadn’t implemented this public health effort.’

The researchers, whose work was partly funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, conducted a randomized trial of peanut consumption in infants at risk for peanut allergy and found that “early introduction of peanuts significantly decreased the frequency of the development of peanut allergy among children at high risk for this allergy and modulated immune responses to peanuts.”

Following the 2015 publication of the trial results in the New England Journal of Medicine, numerous health organizations issued consensus-based interim guidance recommending early allergen introduction.

Years later, the NIAID, leaning on the trial data in the 2015 study, released guidelines recommending early introduction for all infants facing low risk of developing a peanut allergy and for high-risk infants where appropriate.

RELATED: The hidden hospital scam driving up drug prices, coming to a state near you

Photo by Amy Brothers/ The Denver Post

Exposure therapy

The new study in Pediatrics indicates that the exposure strategy was worthwhile and has resulted in a 27.2% reduction in the cumulative incidence of peanut allergy among children in the post-guidelines cohort versus the pre-guidelines cohort, and a reduction of over 40% when comparing the pre-guidelines cohort with the cohort situated after the 2017 release of the updated NIAID guidelines.

After analyzing health records from nearly 50 pediatric practices altogether tracking over 120,000 kids, the researchers behind the new study found that overall food allergy rates in kids under 3 dropped from 1.46% between 2012 and 2015 to 0.93% between 2017 and 2020.

The researchers noted further that a Canadian study found that the implementation of early peanut introduction guidelines “was associated with a significant decrease in new-onset anaphylaxis in children aged 2 years or younger.”

“I can actually come to you today and say there are less kids with food allergy today than there would have been if we hadn’t implemented this public health effort,” Dr. David Hill, an allergist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of the study, told the Associated Press.

While about 60,000 kids have reportedly dodged food allergies since 2015, including 40,000 children who would have otherwise developed peanut allergies, 8% of children remain affected by food allergies. One reason the number remains high may be that only a minority of pediatricians — roughly 29% — indicated they followed the expanded guidance released in 2017.

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​Science, Health, Allergy, Allergies, Allergen, Peanut, Peanuts, Nut, Nut allergy, Medical, Healthy, Politics