Doctors resist urge to go nuts over allergy breakthrough

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-20 09:22

It's a big change for a child who could not tolerate one-sixth of a peanut when he entered the study at the age of 2 and a half.

By 5, Ryan could eat a whopping 15 peanuts at a time with no sign of a reaction - but it wasn't an experience he suddenly relished. "They smell bad," he says.

Millions of people have food allergies and peanut allergy is considered the most dangerous of all, with life-threatening reactions possible from trace amounts. It accounts for most of the 30,000 emergency-room visits and up to 200 deaths attributed to food allergies each year. Only a very few of the worst affected children ever outgrow peanut allergy.

There's no way to avoid a reaction other than avoiding peanuts altogether. Allergy shots that help people resist pollen and other environmental triggers - by getting used to small amounts of the allergen - are too risky for food allergies.

Twenty-nine severely allergic children spent a day in the hospital swallowing minuscule but slowly increasing doses of a specially prepared peanut flour, until they had a reaction. The child went home with a daily dose just under that reactive amount, usually equivalent to one-thousandth of a peanut.

After eight to 10 months of gradual dose increases, most were able to eat the peanut flour equivalent of 15 peanuts daily, says Burks.

This week's report is a big step forward.

Nine children who had taken daily therapy for 2 and a half years were given a series of peanut challenges. Four in the initial study report - and a fifth who finished testing last week - were able to stop treatment and avoid peanuts for an entire month and still have no reaction the next time they ate 15 whole peanuts.

Immune-system changes suggest they are truly allergy-free, Burks says.

"Anything that would enable kids to eat peanuts would be a major advance," says Marshall Plaut of the National Institutes of Health. "This paper, if it's correct, takes it to the next level. That is potentially very exciting

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