Another study has found that some children may be freed of their peanut allergies if they eat a tiny amount of peanut products every day until their body develops a tolerance.
Just last month, researchers in Cambridge, U.K., published a study in the journal Allergy that found that giving children with severe peanut allergies tiny doses of peanut flour every day and building up the dose allowed the children to eat a handful of the nuts after six months.
In this study, teams at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina and Arkansas Children's Hospital gave a group of children almost microscopic doses of peanut daily.
Nine of the 33 children in the study have been able to tolerate the treatment for more than two years and four appear to be allergy-free, the researchers told reporters.
"At the start of the study, these participants couldn't tolerate one-sixth of a peanut," said Dr. Wesley Burks of Duke, who helped lead the study.
"Six months into it, they were ingesting 13 to 15 peanuts before they had a reaction."
The results of the study were reported at a meeting of the American Academy of Asthma and Immunology in Washington.
"This gives other parents and children hope that we'll soon have a safe, effective treatment that will halt allergies to certain foods," said lead researcher Dr. Wesley Burks, Duke's allergy chief.
The method should not be attempted at home. Doctors in this study monitored youngsters closely in case they needed rescue. As well, they used such tiny amounts of peanuts, it's not possible to chop peanut as small as the treatment doses used.
People with peanut allergies can have severe reactions to even tiny amounts of the ground nuts, including anaphylactic shock, which can cause a drop in blood pressure, swelling of the tongue or throat and sometimes death. Their immune systems mistakenly interpret compounds from the foods as invaders and create antibodies to fight them.
It's estimated more than 150,000 Canadians suffer from peanut allergies. Of them, about 25 to 35 per cent are also sensitive to tree nuts, such as almonds. Some children outgrow the allergy on their own but for at least 80 per cent, it's thought that the allergy will be lifelong.
