Scientists believe there is a way of predicting babies' future allergies by analyzing the blood in their umbilical cord, according to the Daily Mail.
After a baby is born, an overactive immune system may cause the child to develop a mild to severely life-threatening allergic reaction to nuts, eggs, milk, etc. Now, researchers with the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia have found that in the umbilical cord blood an immune signature exists that can be a telling sign of food allergies.
'We found a link between children who had hyperactive immune cells at birth and the development of allergies to milk, eggs, peanuts, wheat and other common foods in their first years of life," said professor Len Harrison, an affiliate of the institute.
Harrison's colleague and study author, Yuxia Zhang, also weighed in on the findings.
"In at-risk babies, immune cells called monocytes were activated before or during birth," she said. "Signals from these cells encouraged the development of immune responses by specialized immune cells called T cells that were predisposed to cause allergic reactions to some foods."
The research was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
