A woman blows her nose in Godewaersvelde, northern France on May 18, 2013, as the return of pleasant weather marks the arrival of allergenic pollen.
AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUEN (Photo by Philippe HUGUEN / AFP) (Photo by PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP via Getty WASHINGTON - A new study finds that people with food allergies may be less likely to become infected with COVID-19 than people without them.According to the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and published Tuesday in the "Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology," biweekly nasal swabs and weekly surveys were conducted for six months with more than 4,100 participants from nearly 1,400 households.
The goal was to identify coronavirus infections between May 2020 and February 2021 — prior to the widespread rollout of COVID-19 vaccines among non-healthcare workers in the United States and before the widespread emergence of variants of concern.Participant and household infection and household transmission probabilities were calculated using time-to-event analyses, and factors associated with infection and transmission risk were determined using regression analysis.
Roughly half of the participating children, teenagers and adults had self-reported a food allergy, asthma, eczema or allergic rhinitis.Dr.