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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Australian researchers hail breakthrough after ‘life-changing’ tolerance persists for up to four years
[...] A small clinical trial conducted at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute has led to two-thirds of children treated with an experimental immunotherapy treatment being cured of their allergy. Importantly, this desensitisation to peanuts persisted for up to four years after treatment.
“These children had been eating peanut freely in their diet without having to follow any particular program of peanut intake in the years after treatment was completed,” said the lead researcher, Prof Mimi Tang.
Peanut allergy is the most common cause of anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction, and one of the most common causes of death from food allergy.
To combat this Tang, an immunologist and allergist, pioneered a new form of treatment that combines a probiotic with peanut oral immunotherapy, known as PPOIT. Instead of avoiding the allergen, the treatment is designed to reprogram the immune system’s response to peanuts and eventually develop a tolerance.
[...] Forty-eight children were enrolled in the PPOIT trial and were randomly given either a combination of the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus with peanut protein in increasing amounts, or a placebo, once daily for 18 months.
At the end of the original trial in 2013, 82% of children who received the immunotherapy treatment were deemed tolerant to peanuts compared with just 4% in the placebo group.
Four years later, the majority of the children who gained initial tolerance were still eating peanuts as part of their normal diet and 70% passed a further challenge test to confirm long-term tolerance.
Tang said the results were exciting and had been life-changing for participants. “The way I see it is that we had children who came into the study allergic to peanuts, having to avoid peanuts in their diet, being very vigilant around that, carrying a lot of anxiety with that and, at the end of treatment and even four years later, many of these children who had benefited from our probiotic peanut therapy could now live like a child who didn’t have peanut allergy.”
[...] If confirmed by larger clinical studies, the broader hope is that this treatment can have an impact on the high rates of food allergy among children.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @06:53AM (4 children)
While peanut allergy is a serious problem for those who suffer it, many more people have to deal with some sort of allergy or another. A generalized allergy treatment would sure be nice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Saturday August 19 2017, @01:18PM (3 children)
Unfortunately there are (at least) two different immune systems in the body, this article is about the IgE system where peanut allergies are a good example where contact results in instant mustard gas like symptoms and death. The other system is IgG system like my sons medically diagnosed gluten problem where hours later there's mild to severe food poisoning symptoms, which doesn't sound terribly impressive unless you're allergic to something contained in almost all junk food, like wheat gluten for example, in which case having 24x7 low grade food poisoning is kinda an impairment to life and good nutrition.
Its possible that a treatment for IgE immune system will work on IgG system but theres no inherent reason to think so. As a practical example if my son eats way too much gluten he's gonna puke and stabbing him with epi-pen would only annoy him.
There's an interesting acute vs chronic issue where IgE allergies can kill someone in a couple minutes, but IgG allergies take months for malnutrition to set in but they'll get you in the end just as sure.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Saturday August 19 2017, @03:48PM (1 child)
Sadly I have that t-shirt. And Gastro DR telling me that attempting to identify food allergies is a waste of time. That medical advice almost killed me.
I'd tried cutting possibly problem foods out of my diet without success, until I went on a massively restrictive nearly rice and water diet for a few weeks before slowly adding foods.
I found out I react to cows milk and corn, which are also in just about everything. I'd cut them out individually before, but did things like replacing milk & cereal with breakfast tacos or taqitos with cornbread shells. Dammit!
I found I could have an upset stomach or loose bowels very fast with some foods, or others would damage my intestines for 6-8 weeks before I felt stabbing abdominal pains. It's frustratingly slow to test foods with delays like that!
Make sure your son's been screened for auto immune disease. Celiacs is the poster child for gluten, but immune system sensitivity disorders can do the same thing (and depressingly so much more). Mine's a mast cell disease (very high tryptase levels were the first real clinical finding). A friend's hyper peanut problem turned out to be a rare leukemia. (anything screwing up the bone marrow is suspect) You may want to have your son try a super restrictive diet and then slowly ad things. Super boring, but you may find additional problem foods. Preventing the lifelong damage is worth it. I wish I knew sooner.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 21 2017, @02:00PM
Those doctors are pretty much shit. Ours suggested the good news is possibly he only has stomach cancer. Because he can make a lot more money off stomach cancer than "stop eating gluten", and who cares how me makes the parents feel.
Another ripoff was the $500 office consult every six months "hows that not eating gluten doing for you? Oh OK then I advise continuing not to eat gluten, here's my bill see ya in half a year for my next $500".
I've never experienced a more money grubbing selection of doctors than gastroenterologists.
(Score: 2) by gringer on Saturday August 19 2017, @09:03PM
There are a few ongoing trials at the moment testing whether giving people pinworms can help with Coeliac disease. Prior trials (relating to a different medical condition) suggested that there was a substantial protective effect for worms.
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