The Cambridge group will begin a randomized controlled trial next month with 104 children involved, similar to the peanut study done already, but with controls, said researcher Dr. Andrew Clark of Cambridge University Hospitals.
Some 30,000 Americans go to the emergency room each year because of severe food allergies, said Dr. Stefano Luccioli of the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Food Additive Safety. Food allergies affect about 4 percent of adults and 6 to 8 percent of children under 3, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Researchers took a group of 23 children allergic to peanuts and gave them small amounts of peanuts to eat daily, usually starting with 1 mg, said Clark. The peanut quantity was increased carefully every two weeks, until the children could eat about five peanuts.
They took this dose daily for at least six weeks, mostly tolerating it well except for some temporary mouth itching or abdominal pain, he said.
The results showed that 21 of the 23 children, or 91 percent, can safely eat at least five peanuts every day without any reaction. One of the children can get two peanuts a day, and one dropped out of the study. After six months, 19 of them could tolerate 12 peanuts at a time, and after one year, 15 participants could tolerate 32 peanuts. Participants said they didn't have to carefully read food labels or fear the allergy anymore, Clark said.
"This is very exciting, clearly, because here we have somebody who can have anaphylaxis and deadly reaction from trace amounts, and you're converting this person into somebody who can tolerate a significant amount of the food," said Dr. Anna Nowak-Wegrzyn, associate professor of pediatrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.
She was not involved in this study.
