Each year, 1,200 Irish children are diagnosed with a peanut allergy

Chris Pearson still remembers vividly the "bolt from the blue" day when his daughter Sophie first suffered an allergic reaction to peanuts.

“She was in senior infants at the time, and one day the childminder rang to say she was vomiting. By the time my wife got home and brought her to the GP, her face had swelled up and she looked like the Elephant Man,” he says.

“She’d never had an allergic reaction before but she’d eaten a bar containing peanuts, so it was obvious really,” Pearson recalls.

Anti-histamines helped bring down the reaction but from that day on Sophie was pitched into a new world, one increasingly familiar to thousands of Irish families.

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An estimated 1,200 Irish children a year are diagnosed with a peanut allergy. Each one, together with their families, must scrupulously avoid consuming even tiny amounts of peanut to avoid suffering a severe allergic reaction which, in some cases, can be life-threatening.

The experience of having a young daughter with a peanut allergy prompted Emily Tobin to set up a Facebook group on the issue several years ago. It now has 350 members and acts as a forum to share information and advice.

For the Pearsons, the first task was to work out what food was acceptable and what was not. Anything containing groundnut oil was out, whereas hazelnut spreads were okay, for instance.

“Restaurants were tricky, in particular Asian ones because they use a lot of hazelnut oil.”

EpiPen

Sophie, now aged 11, carries two EpiPens “to be sure to be sure” in case she needs a shot of adrenaline to counter anaphylactic shock caused by accidental ingestion of peanut.

Sophie’s school in Kinsale, Co Cork, created a peanut-free zone, while friends’ families adjusted their cooking when she came to visit.

“For the first few years bringing her to birthday parties, we’d loiter at the party or in the car outside, just in case there was an accident.”

When the Infant centre, Ireland’s first dedicated perinatal research centre, offered Sophie the chance to take part in the trial of a new immunotherapy to treat peanut allergy, the family jumped at the chance. Over the space of a year and multiple appointments, she progressed from ingesting a tiny amount of peanut to a 2,000 milligram dose combined with the drug.

“As a result, I wouldn’t now be worried about her accidentally eating a peanut. As she grows up, it would make us more comfortable about her being out on her own.

“At the same time, we cannot afford to become complacent, to take our eyes off the ball.”