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September 5, 2010 |
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Possible therapy takes bite out of peanut allergy
A few kids now are allergy-free thanks to a scary treatment — tiny amounts of the very food that endangered them. Don't try this at home. Doctors monitored the youngsters closely in case they needed rescue, and there's no way to dice a peanut as small as the treatment doses required. But over several years, the children's bodies learned to tolerate peanuts. Immune-system tests show no sign of remaining allergy in five youngsters, and others can withstand amounts that once would have left them wheezing or worse, scientists reported Sunday. Are the five cured? Doctors at Duke University Medical Center and Arkansas Children's Hospital must "We're optimistic that they have lost their peanut allergy," said the lead researcher, Dr. Wesley Burks, Duke's allergy chief. "We've not seen this before medically. We'll have to see what happens to them." More rigorous research is under way to confirm the pilot study, released Sunday at a meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. If it pans out, the approach could mark a major advance for an allergy that afflicts 1.8 million people in the United States. 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. |
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