(Ivanhoe Newswire) – You may want to limit the amount of nuts you eat while you’re pregnant.

A new study from the Netherlands finds expectant mothers who eat nuts or nut products – like peanut butter – every day increase their child’s risk of asthma by more than 50 percent compared to women who rarely or never eat them.

Researchers looked at data from nearly 4,000 pregnant women who filled out a questionnaire that asked how often they ate vegetables, fresh fruit, fish, eggs, milk, milk products, nuts and nut products during the last month. The study also looked at their children’s diets when they were two years old and evaluated their allergy and asthma symptoms every year until they were eight.

“The only consistent association between the maternal intake of the investigated food groups during pregnancy and childhood asthma symptoms until eight years of age that we found was with nut products,” lead author, Saskia M. Willers, M.Sc., was quoted as saying. “Daily versus rare consumption of nut products – which we assumed was largely peanut butter – was consistently and positively associated with childhood asthma symptoms, including wheeze, dyspnea, doctor diagnosed asthma and asthma-associated steroid use.”
 

A strict low-allergen diet is not recommended for most pregnant women because of the chance of maternal and fetal malnutrition. Researchers say peanuts may be the exception to the general recommendations because they can cause anaphylactic shock and the allergy is less likely to be outgrown than other allergies.

The authors say more research needs to be done before they can recommend women avoid nuts altogether while they’re pregnant.

SOURCE: American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 2008; 178: 124-131