Therapy Could Cure Your Peanut Allergy

Spare a thought for the peanut-allergic of the world. Never will they experience the mouth-cementing joy of diving spoon-first into a jar of the crunchy stuff, nor will they taste a really good peanut curry. Don't even get started on the Dairy Milk Fruit & Nut.

But we could be one step closer to wiping out the diet-limiting and, more importantly, potentially fatal, consequences of peanut intolerance.

The findings of a new study from paediatric researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill), Duke University, and Johns Hopkins University show that oral immunotherapy—the process of eating small, gradually increasing amounts of peanut protein over a period of time—can successfully suppress allergies to the nut in young children.

Those with peanut intolerance usually experience their first reaction by two-years-old, with the condition persisting in 80 percent of affected people. In extreme cases, peanut allergy sufferers risk life-threatening anaphylactic shocks, should they accidentally ingest the nut.

The new study builds on previous research, which has shown that eating small amounts of peanut when very young (although not, y'know, stuffing your baby to the gills with Reese's Pieces) can stop the allergy from developing.

According to findings published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the researchers randomly assigned 40 preschool children with peanut allergies either a high-dose of peanut oral immunotherapy with a daily target of 3,000 milligrams of peanut protein, or a low-dose with a target of 300 milligrams.

The children—aged between 9 months and three years old—received the oral immunotherapy for 29 months, on average. Many experienced side effects like abdominal pain, but this was mostly mild and required little treatment. When the trial finished, the children avoided eating peanuts for four weeks, before attempting to eat them again in a controlled setting.

Those who were able to eat the nut after four weeks without reaction were then allowed to introduce normal amounts of peanut into their diet, via foods like peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Nearly 80 percent of the children involved in the trial were able to do this, successfully suppressing their peanut allergy.

Speaking to the Guardian, Marshall Plaut from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which funded the study, said: "This study provides critical evidence supporting the safety and effectiveness of peanut oral immunotherapy in treating young children newly diagnosed with peanut allergy."

Researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill will continue to monitor the children to assess the long-term outcomes of the study, but the co-authors hope the findings so far can assist in further allergy research.

Brian P. Vickery told Futurity: "These findings, if confirmed in larger studies, could transform the care of peanut-allergic children early in life."

Let's hope the research brings us a step closer to a more universal peanut butter jelly time.