Has a Cure for Peanut Allergy Been Discovered?
A new study found that a medication taken for four years cured most children with peanut allergies.
(Photo: shutterstock)Everyone knows at least one horror story of an allergy that brought someone to the brink of life-threatening danger: a friend of a friend who almost choked to death on a plane because of a nut in a cake, or perhaps a cousin of a nephew who accidentally touched cheese. Allergies are a serious concern. In most cases, they are not life-threatening, but they still have very unpleasant side effects. And when they are life-threatening? An EpiPen might save the situation, but medicine has not yet found a way to prevent the outbreak of the allergy.
However, a new study promises exactly that. Researchers in America decided to investigate the possibility of curing children who suffer from peanut allergies, one of the most common allergies in the world. For four years, these children were treated with a medication that contained a mixture of probiotics with peanuts. After four years, most of the children developed a tolerance to peanuts and were no longer allergic.
This clinical study was conducted with a relatively small group: 24 children received the medication, and 24 additional children were in the control group that received a placebo. Still, researchers say these findings are encouraging.
"Our findings show that immunotherapy treatment combining probiotics and peanuts provides long-term clinical benefits compared to a placebo," the researchers wrote in the prestigious medical journal 'The Lancet'. "Two-thirds of those who received the treatment showed no symptoms of allergy after the four years." In addition to the fact that the children no longer had allergic reactions to peanuts, an allergy skin test—a common test to determine what someone is allergic to—showed much lighter rashes in response to peanut exposure.
The researchers say that further studies of this type will be required in the future to ensure that the combination of probiotics and peanuts indeed helps cure peanut allergies—and of course, to examine whether similar combinations can be used to treat other types of allergies.
