New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
With the initial administration of each up-dose, we would typically see a barely detectable and mild reaction such as hives or coughing. After a few daily treatments at each dosage, there would be no discernible reaction. We have always been aware we were close to the edge of our child's sensitivity because certain things that seem to increase her immune system loading such as having a fever or being exposed to large amounts of seasonal pollen require reducing the dose slightly to avoid reactions.
We have reached a dosage where it is unlikely that our child would ever face a serious reaction from accidental exposure, which is the goal of the treatment.
I hope that the availability of an FDA approved peanut preparation (and patent protection for some elements of this) does not increase the cost of performing this treatment.
I think taking a prescribed amount of peanut protein to treat this allergy fits that definition.
If ever a hedge a hedge there was, this is it: This works really well and they can eat a couple peanuts, but we don't actually know why or how or to what extent it's dependable...
It does not seem that they are claiming this is dependable as a "cure", but they are claiming that it is dependable for incidental exposure, which seems to be a corollary from the ongoing treatment including eating a peanut a day.
I'm with you on that. I follow the links to every story like this and they're almost all the same - hope but no cure.
So are they saying <1% (ie atleast one) of children on placebo experienced severe side effects?
(It’s also possible this person had an unrelated condition)
So in the accounting, you take everything adverse against the treatment, wether it’s the placebo or the medicine under test, and you compare the difference between the two as rate of adverse effect for the medicine under test. And then there is a giant poker game to balance the benefits and the risks.
Obviously a silly example but if things aren't reported because they don't appear to be connected to the study, we don't have the data to analyse at a higher level.
It doesn't mean that getting hit by a bus is a side effect of the medicine, but rather getting hit by a bus is a potential outcome of one of the side effects of the medicine.
It does not mean necessarily mean that the effects were caused by being given the placebo ("placebo effect").
The levels of peanut allergies correlates quite heavily with early-years education and parents freaking out about keeping schools and homes a nut-free zone.
Our home was not nut-free prior to that point, and obviously she did not attend school. Had we exposed her directly to peanuts earlier, would it have made a difference? Right now, no one knows because the underlying cause of these allergies is unknown. I have no allergies at all, and my wife has only seasonal allergies (ragweed for sure, maybe pollen).
So who'd have thought exposure to an allergen would help? Well when she was born the prevailing advice was explicit to avoid exposure in the first few months. That advice has reversed recently (and after my child was born), based on a study in 2015 [1]. There are still babies that get peanut allergies even when they're exposed at only a few months old, so it's not like this is fool-proof.
Maybe in a few years/decades the underlying cause of food allergies will be well understood, and we'll look back on this time in the same way we currently look back on the attitudes of smoking in the early 20th century.
[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/new-guidelines-preventin...
As a partner of somebody with severe nut anaphylaxis I'm heartened by the news but still watching from the sidelines
Can you link me to anything? I was pretty discouraged by the result as the article explicitly says that the trial didn't work on adults:
"The treatment was not effective in the small number of adults enrolled in the study."
Of course, a lot of money went into the regulatory process of running the trials and getting it approved, but I still suspect people will be critical if they charge $15,000 per year for it.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/18/peanut-aller...
I also wonder if the fact that my wife has a mild nut allergy and therefore avoids nuts would have been a factor, the girls would not have been exposed to nuts in the womb. Just guessing though, ask a doctor.
> One of the most significant advances in food allergy occurred with the release of the results from The Learning Early about Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study in early 2015. Led by Dr. Gideon Lack of Kings College in London, LEAP showed a reduction in the development of peanut allergies of up to 86 percent by children who were exposed to peanut protein early
I say this not to diminish the scare you had. My son is allergic to peanuts so I know the fear. But if a population can see 86% reduction in new allergies, I'm all for it.
In our case, both of us has/had all of the above, and our daughter did end up with it too. We don't have peanut allergies though, which she has. Curiously enough, she also reacts strongly to fish egg. Not fish itself, just the eggs (ie caviar, rom, etc). Shrimp and shrimp eggs are fine though.
I strongly remember the times she accidentally ate caviar. Took maybe a couple of seconds before she started screaming, saying her lips and mouth hurt, then vomiting like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Quite scary. One of the times I hadn't cleaned the table good enough the night before when I was snacking on sandwiches with caviar. None visible, just must've missed some protein or so.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-kids-help-prove-early-...
Also, peanut allergies hardly affect anyone. As a society, why waste resources on such endeavors when we have diseases like cancer that affect millions every year?
"—Among children with some reaction to peanuts on the skin test: Only 11 percent of peanut eaters developed an allergy versus 35 percent of abstainers."
2) If we could cure cancer with peanut flour, I'm sure we would. Unfortunately that one's a bit harder.