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LIFE> Health
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Doctors resist urge to go nuts over allergy breakthrough
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-20 09:22
American scientists believe they might be close to curing life-threatening peanut allergies. A few children are now allergy-free thanks to a scary treatment - tiny amounts of the very food that endangered them. Don't try this at home. There is no way to dice a peanut as small as the treatment doses required and doctors also had to monitor the youngsters closely in case they needed rescuing. Over several years, however, the children's bodies have learned to tolerate peanuts. Immune-system tests showed no sign of remaining allergy in five of them, while others were able to withstand amounts that would once have left them wheezing or worse. So are the five cured? Doctors at Duke University Medical Center, North Carolina, and Arkansas Children's Hospital will track them further in the years ahead to be sure. "We're optimistic that they have lost their peanut allergy," says the lead researcher, Dr Wesley Burks. More rigorous research is under way to confirm the pilot study that was released at this week's meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. If it pans out, the approach could mark a major advance for the allergy. For parents of these little allergy pioneers, that means no more fear that something as simple as sharing a friend's cookie at school could mean a race to the emergency room. "It's such a burden lifted off your shoulder to realize you don't have to worry about your child eating a peanut and ending up really sick," says Rhonda Cassada of Hillsborough, North Carolina, whose 7-year-old son, Ryan, has been allergy-free for two years. |
