Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
- The trial included hundreds of participants with peanut allergies.
- The oral regimen contained trace amounts of peanut protein, and participants would take increasing amounts of the protein over the course of six months, with the goal being to retrain the immune system.
- By the end, about two-thirds of participants were able to consume peanut protein without showing any allergic symptoms.
A new treatment could soon help reduce the severity of peanut allergy reactions in children, and also ease the anxieties that accompany the life-threatening condition.
The treatment is an oral immunotherapy regimen that contains tiny amounts of peanuts. It’s designed to gradually expose children to the food and build tolerance to it over the course of six months under supervised medical care. The goal isn’t to eliminate the allergy but to reduce the severity of a reaction should one occur.
Recently, hundreds of children received the regimen while participating in a double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial that lasted six months. The results were largely promising: About two-thirds of the children were able to consume about 600 milligrams or more of peanut protein—the equivalent of two peanuts—without developing allergic symptoms, as the New York Times reports.
“This trial is the most definitive look at whether this treatment is right for patients,” Dr. Brian P. Vickery, the lead author of a new paper on the trial, told the Times. “It has generated the highest quality evidence to date about whether oral immunotherapy works and how safe it is.”
Still, the results were mixed, as Vickery and his colleagues announced Sunday at a conference of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in Seattle. Here’s a quick breakdown of the recent trial, which studied the effects of a “peanut-derived investigational biologic oral immunotherapy drug” called AR101 and developed by Aimmune Therapeutics.
- 551 people participated, 496 of whom were 4 to 17 years old. All participants had peanut allergies, and displayed allergic reactions after consuming as little as one-third of…
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