How a single kiss could kill this teen

Stone Cofini may not be allowed to date until he turns 16 next January, but his mother is already losing sleep over the prospect.

Dawn Cofini, a hairdresser from Nanuet, NY, is terrified that kissing another teen could prove deadly for her son. Stone, 15, is so allergic to peanuts, just inhaling dust from one could send him into anaphylactic shock — a life-threatening state in which airways narrow and oxygen is cut off.

“If a girl had previously eaten something fried in peanut oil [and then kissed Stone],” Dawn said, “it would really be dangerous.”

While her worry seems extreme, four years ago, 20-year-old Myriam Ducré-Lemay, of Quebec, died after accidentally receiving a peanut-laced kiss from her boyfriend.

Peanut allergies are up — patient numbers rose among children in the United States from 0.4 percent in 1997 to 1.4 percent in 2010, according to a study at Mount Sinai Hospital. And horror stories abound. According to a 2014 report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, some 2,458 people died in the US between 1999 and 2010 due to anaphylaxis.

It’s scary enough to send some parents into vigilance hyperdrive, sometimes against doctors’ advice.

“You wave goodbye to your child in the morning wondering whether it’s the last time you’ll see them,” said Dawn, 53, who, like the other mothers in The Post’s article, takes sensible precautions to reduce risk.

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