I only ask because it seemed to have been general knowledge that this was impossible / couldn't be done up until recently. As a outsider looking it, it seems quite obvious, but that's just due to naivete.
The original trial (I believe) came from a study that saw a certain Jewish community that eats a lot of powdered peanut, had a higher incidence of children losing their nut allergies. So the environment helped to prime these children.
My kid has allergies, and over the last 2 years we've seen the advice change rapidly - from initial suggestions to keep him away from anything that might cause him hives (soft play centres etc) to now where they encourage that (though obviously we still keep him away from eating allergens.
He had a laundry list of allergies that he responded to on his skin prick test last year, but his results yesterday were so much better - with the possibility that he only has 4 core responses left (peanuts, sesame, milk, egg) - with time still to lose those over time (he's only 3). We've been giving him loads of probiotics, namely Water Kefir - but no idea if he would have grown out of them anyway.
Happy to have a stab at any questions people might have - but I'm no expert, just a (reasonably) well read dad - my wife know far more than me about this.
1) Your body "sees" this, meaning it has antibodies that react to it
2) Cells whose antibodies are activated replicate, as they are recognizing something that is, to the body, presumably foreign and bad
3) Because you now have more cells after the originals replicated, the effects of the allergy worsen as you are now more reactive than before
I'd be interested to see some tests on this. I have a few hypothesizes that we could test:
1) If the children are still reactive to immunological tests (Meaning they still have the antibodies!), are those antibodies being blocked by another compound, another cross-reactive antibody? Another idea is that the actual immune response to antibody activation (Recognizing peanuts) might be handled differently within the cells that produce the actual response to the allergen (Swelling and stuff).
2) If the antibodies no longer exist, I would start looking in the areas where immune cells develop to see if cells producing reactive antibodies to the allergen are being killed off during development (This process is also why you don't kill yourself with antibodies recognizing yourself). If that isn't the case we need to track individual immune cells over the course of treatment.
The immune response to IgE binding is intense. Allergic reaction is an IgE response to a harmless antigen. However, IgE can be downregulated by repeated exposure to the antigen in question. If the body uses IgE too much (eg. from repeated exposure), it starts to replace IgE antibodies with the more subtle IgG antibodies.
The immune system is very fascinating really. IgE might be the key to effective cancer immunotherapy. Imagine if we could program your immune system to fight a cancer as intensely as it fights a pollen grain or peanut in an allergic individual. There is a lot of research in this area these days.
Thanks for clarifying that.
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/37566392...