Enlarge / Each half-peanut kernel contains around 150 mg of peanut protein. (credit: flickr user: Andrew Sweeney)
Peanut allergies are among the most fatal of food allergies. An accidental exposure to even a tiny quantity of peanut protein is capable of provoking severe reactions. For kids with these allergies, the killer might also be the cure—as long as it comes in even tinier doses. The results of a clinical trial, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, show excellent results for a careful desensitization program. The treatment doesn’t cure the allergy, and comes with substantial risks, but it could help kids to live their lives without the fear of a peanut-flavored trigger in everything they eat.
The principle behind desensitization, or allergen immunotherapy (AIT), is to give the body exposure to the allergen in tiny and gradually increasing doses, teaching it to react less when it recognizes something it considers an invader. In 2015, the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology published a paper detailing the “international consensus” on the treatment, stating that while the technique is uncontroversial for hayfever, there wasn’t enough understanding of its uses in treating food allergy.
Research on AIT for peanut allergies has been trundling along, but hasn’t provided enough high-quality evidence for it to become an approved treatment. That’s why the publication of this phase 3 trial is big news: that’s the last stage that drug trials need to go through before the company can apply for the drug to be licensed by regulatory bodies like the FDA. However, that doesn’t mean the science on this is done and everyone can go home—there are plenty more questions to be answered, and often more than one trial is needed before approval.
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