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Study suggests children can train bodies to beat food allergies
Making the culprit the cure
Study suggests children can train their bodies to beat food allergies
LAURAN NEERGAARD, Associated Press | December 26, 2006
Photo By GERRY BROOME/APSince 7-year-old Elizabeth White began taking her "peanut medicine," her parents say they no longer have to worry about a dangerous allergic reaction every time she goes somewhere without them.
WASHINGTON — Elizabeth White's first encounter with peanuts — a nibble of a peanut butter cracker at age 14 months — left the toddler gasping for breath. Within minutes, her airways were swelling shut.
A mere fifth of a peanut was enough to trigger an allergic reaction.
So it was with trepidation that her parents enrolled Elizabeth, at 4 1/2 , in a groundbreaking experiment: Could eating tiny amounts of the very foods that endanger them eventually train children's bodies to overcome severe food allergies?
It just may work, suggest preliminary results from a handful of youngsters allergic to peanuts or eggs — and who, after two years of treatment, seem protected enough that an accidental bite of the forbidden foods is no longer a huge threat.
"We're so lucky," says Carrie White, Elizabeth's mother.
Averting emergenciesNow 7, Elizabeth can safely tolerate the equivalent of seven peanuts. For the first time, the Raleigh, N.C., girl is allowed to go on playdates and to birthday parties without her parents first teaching the chaperones to use an EpiPen, a shot of epinephrine that can reverse a life-threatening reaction.
Don't try this experiment on your own, warns lead researcher Dr. A. Wesley Burks of Duke University Medical Center. Children in the study are closely monitored for the real risk of life-threatening reactions.
But if the work pans out — and larger studies are beginning — it would be a major advance in the quest to at least reduce severe food allergies that trigger 30,000 emergency-room visits and kill 150 people a year.
Oral immunotherapyFor now, there's no way to avoid a reaction other than avoiding the food, something the research aims to change.
Allergies to pollen and other environmental triggers often are treated with shots called immunotherapy. A series of injections containing small amounts of the allergen builds up patients' tolerance, reducing or even eliminating symptoms in many people.
Shots proved too dangerous for food allergy. So Burks and colleagues at Duke and the University of Arkansas developed an oral immunotherapy.
Here's how it worked: First, youngsters spent a day at the Duke hospital swallowing minuscule but increasing doses of either an egg powder or a defatted peanut flour, depending on their allergy. They started at
1/3,000th of a peanut or about
1/1,000th of an egg, increasing the amount until the child broke out in hives or had some other reaction.
Then the children were sent home with a daily dose just under that reactive amount. Every two weeks, the participants returned for a small dose increase until they reached the equivalent of 1/10 of an egg or one peanut — a maintenance dose that they swallowed daily.
After two years, four of the seven youngsters in the egg pilot study could eat two scrambled eggs with no problem, and two more ate about as much before symptoms began, researchers report in the January edition of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
In the peanut pilot study, yet to be published, six of the children challenged so far could tolerate 15 peanuts, Burks says; Elizabeth's limit was seven.