A Promising Peanut Allergy Treatment May Not Work So Well After All, Research Review Says

In a new review published in the Lancet, researchers came to a disappointing conclusion about recent studies on treating peanut allergies. They found that treating children by exposing them to small amounts of peanuts, which has shown success in several studies, is actually associated with an increased risk of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. This approach, called oral Immunotherapy, involves repeated controlled exposure to whatever is causing an allergic reaction — in this case peanut allergens — to retrain the immune system. Allergic reactions occur when the immune system treats benign substances, like certain foods, as if they were dangerous pathogens, like bacteria or viruses, and launches an inflammatory response. Immunotherapy is designed to teach the immune system to be less sensitive to the substances in question. Multiple studies have found that oral immunotherapy — which involves feeding kids who are allergic to peanuts small amounts of peanut compounds — can help children tolerate the food. But according to the Lancet analysis, which examined 12 trials involving about 1,000 patients, those encouraging results may not translate to real protection over time. While people with peanut allergies had a 7% risk of experiencing anaphylaxis — a severe immune reaction in which blood pressure drops and the airways narrow, making breathing difficult — without oral immunotherapy, they had a 22% risk of having a bad reaction when th...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Research Source Type: news