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Peanut Allergy Treatment Trial In UK "A Success"
cold fjord writes: "The BBC reports, 'Peanuts are the most common cause of fatal allergic reactions to food. There is no treatment so the only option for patients is to avoid them completely, leading to a lifetime of checking every food label before a meal. The trial ... tried to train the children's immune system to tolerate peanut. Every day they were given a peanut protein powder — starting off on a dose equivalent to a 70th of a peanut. Once a fortnight the dose was increased while the children were in hospital and then they continued taking the higher dose at home. The majority of patients learned to tolerate the peanut. ... Dr Andrew Clark, told the BBC: "It really transformed their lives dramatically, this really comes across during the trial. ... Dr Pamela Ewan added ... further studies would be needed and that people should not try this on their own as this "should only be done by medical professionals in specialist settings."' The story also notes, 'The findings, published in the Lancet, suggest 84% of allergic children could eat the equivalent of five peanuts a day after six months.'"
in treating various allergies in the past 10 years. Good studies since 70's.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/147019
were given nice funerals, or what?
Not why do it, but why does the treatment work? The cited Lancet article doesn't seem to offer any answers (or hint at any efforts to find them).... development of enzyme reserves??
And what of the annecdotal relationship between peanut allergies and *not* breast feeding?
I've spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocaine powder. :)
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/01January/Pages/Peanut-allergy-therapy-shows-promise.aspx
I claim prior art! I've spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.
I know of parents that don't give peanuts to their kids since babies, just in case they have allergies. So the kid does not develop protection. They give them allergies out of paranoia
The practice is Specific Immunotherapy (SIT) and they do it a lot in Europe.
You make immunoglobulins, IgG, IgA, IgM, and specific to an allergic response: IgE.
Basically, when you are allergic to something, you have IgE antibodies against the allergen. For example, if you are allergic to cat, you are probably (90%) allergic to the protein FelD1 and you would have IgE-anti-FelD1 (IgE antibodies that can specifically bind to the FelD1 protein of cat).
When IgE binds to the cat protein, you get the effects of allergy (i.e. release of histamine etc).
With SIT, you are trying to stimulate the immune response, but at a lower level than what would trigger your IgE response.
A result of SIT is that you make more and more IgG4 antibody (if you were having SIT for your cat allergy, you would be making more IgG4-anti-FelD1 for example).
The way that IgG4 blocks your allergic response is complex and not totally understood (but well observed).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1398-9995.2011.02628.x/pdf
Interestingly, this effect is observed 'in the wild' with beekeepers and their allergy to the Pla protein of bee venom.
Then you probably didn't have an anaphylactic "immediate hypersensitivity reaction after peanut ingestion" as the article says. If you had, your mother probably would have been terrified of putting you near a peanut ever again.
Short answer, nope.
Feed your kids real food, people, and let them play in the dirt. Get a pet. If you want your kid to have a healthy normal life, expose them to things in normal life. If you wrap them in Triclosan-scented everything and feel them gluten/soy/sugarfree Brawndo for years, they'll never learn to metabolize or tolerate anything else. Life carries risk, and as much as public education has taught you that causality is a human construct, it ain't - learn to deal with things or they'll deal with you, you pussies.
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Hat tip to Dr Romulus Whitaker. He trained the traditional snake hunting tribes to switch to milking the venom and releasing the snakes back into the wild. Great work saving these great snakes, reducing vermin and saving a significant percentage of the harvest of that part of the world. Sadly he is completely allergic to anti-venom now, due to numerous treatment for snake bites in the past. So next bite he gets, he would die. Shows one could develop intolerance instead of tolerance by repeated exposure to toxins.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Who the hell didn't know this already? I've been bleating about it for ages.
It's almost entirely caused by the "avoid peanuts during pregnancy" self-fulfilling prophecy (if you do so, chances are the next generation will be more allergic to peanuts).
When I was a kid, the kid who was "allergic" was rare, one-in-a-whole-school kind of event. Nowadays, working in schools, I see medical lists in schools where something like 20% of their roll lists are allergic to something-or-other.
Nuts figure heavily, as does kiwi - I can sort of understand kiwi. It's a rare fruit that you probably WON'T have contact with until later in life. But nuts? Those were in almost everything when I was a kid (peanut butter for a start).
Ladies should not avoid nuts in pregnancy. There's no reason to. In the womb, the baby won't be affected adversely by them anyway (unless the mother is also allergic - hence the growing problem), but it will seed their immune systems to cope with it.
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My allergy to peanuts and cashews has been going strong for over 50 years and I'm still alive. Peanuts and cashews are the worst, and to me, the difference is like between a bee (peanut) and yellow-jacket (cashew) sting. Similar reaction, but stronger and nastier. Peas, lima beans and lentils also cause an allergic sensation, but won't get me sick
As a kid, today you get protected, but once out on your own, shit happens. In third grade, I knew I couldn't eat the peanut butter candy we were making in class, but wanted to help, so I stirred it. That got me sent home with my eyes swollen shut. Later in life, I've been hit by a "maple frosted" donut, learned about mole sauce and sate sauce the hard way (note to self; watch out if the E on the end of the sauce's name is pronounced as A). Those cut up garlic pieces in the dipping sauce at the Thai restaurant were actually chopped peanuts. Those rice crispy squares only had 1 tablespoon of peanut butter in the batch, but it got me. The chicken salad sandwich with cashews did too. I could probably die from a large dose, but sense it pretty quickly. What gets my goat is the warnings on packaged goods saying the product was made in a factory that uses peanuts. I ignore those labels and only sensed peanuts in M&M plains and a Hershey White Chocolate candy bar.
For me, the smallest bit ingested means I'm going to puke. It might take 10 minutes or three hours, but it is going to happen. Normally, once I know it is in my system (seconds after swallowing), I'll drink a bunch of water and try to puke it out of my system. That sort of works. I also get wheezy and my throat closes a bit, but not as bad as others report. Then, I get sleepy. Even the dust in the airplane gets my eyes itchy. Years ago, I tried the desensitization approach on my own, but didn't like the reaction and stopped pretty quick.
http://youtu.be/wEb5a-I0kyg
Allergies mean you are a pussy.
The only similarity between this treatment and Homeopathy is the tiny dosage, though by Homeopathic standards 1/70th of a peanut is an off the charts dosage.
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I've got an iron constitution and can eat anything. Both my kids are sensitive to cow's milk and soy protein (not allergic, but it gives them stomach pains and bad gas). Nuts are totally fine.
When my wife was breastfeeding our first kid we noticed that *he* got symptoms when *she* consumed cow's milk. So whatever is problematic in the dairy was being transmitted through the breastmilk.
"Because the pediatricians tell us that if we give peanuts to a child under 2 years old, he will die (ok... they really just strongly advise against it)."
That's just it, that *used* to be the recommendation, but now there are multiple studies coming out showing that the above advice may not be the best course of action. If your medical professionals are staying on top of things they may start to change their recommendations...
We did all the right stuff (breastmilk, good food, have a cat, play in dirt, etc.)
However, both my kids are sensitive (not allergic) to soy protein and cow-based dairy products, and my older kid seems to react to gluten.
We discovered the dairy issue while he was still breastfeeding...he got really bad gas/bloating when my wife consumed dairy products. Took us months to realize what was going on.
Maybe because allergies are really not affected by your brain.
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