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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
They were given a 6th peanut.
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. :)
Contrary to the media hype, MOST people with peanut allergies don't have a fatal reaction. Just in case, the dosing was started in a hospital setting.
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
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.
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.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Louis CK: Of Course But Maybe
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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.
The actual "disease" here is affluenza, or perhaps it's anxiety that overprotective mothers project onto their children. I grew up in a small town, had pets, played in the dirt every day. Nut allergies were unheard of. It's also very interesting that farmers and dirt poor people in 3d world countries don't get these allergies. This is a problem that city dwellers construct. It's called the hygiene hypothesis.
It is very suspicious that neither the BBC article nor the Lancet abstract report a mortality statistic. Is there some problem counting bodies of people who drop dead after nut ingestion? Please don't quote me the stupid 150 deaths/year number one sees in peanut allergy articles here in America. That number was an extrapolation from a single study done of farmers in a county in Minnesota. There were no deaths from anaphylactic shock identified in the study. Somehow, the authors waved their hands and estimated 150 deaths/yr in the entire US. Meredith Broussard covered this in an article published in Harper's in Jan 2008, "Everyone's Gone Nuts." It's behind a paywall, unfortunately. I recall that the article quoted a statistician at the CDC who said there was no more than a handful of deaths in the US from anaphylactic shock in a year. Of course, the food allergist nut cases (pun intended) attacked her in droves.
There is an article by Broussard online. It covers the money trail and details how some people profit from the nut allergy scare.
I think the nut allergies are a bit like the terrorism scare. It is massively overblown. Falls in bathtubs and lightning strikes are far greater threats.
"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens." - Schiller
Wow. Thanks for the insight. If only you could have been around to honor us with your knowledge a few years ago.
My wife routinely ate peanut butter during her first pregnancy but our child still has a peanut allergy. Maybe you should specify that it is the 'crunchy' variety everyone needs and not the 'smooth' that my wife prefers.
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
And it is going to take a long time for those new recommendations to make their way into the general public. There are piles of parenting help books that old parents gleefully shovel onto new parents. There are articles and magazines and Grandma and the crotchety old lady down the street. Everyone has an opinion about how you should be raising your kids and how you are doing a shitty job at it and your kids are going to die or need therapy or be a bum because you didn't give them the special new omega whatever supplement that promotes brain growth.
And the advice is constantly changing. My husband is the youngest of three. His eldest brother slept on his stomach as a baby. Their mom was told to put the middle one on her side using this bizarre wedge pillow everyone had to buy or your baby would die, and by the time he was born, we had decided that babies had to sleep on their back. They just recently came out telling us to keep kids in rear facing car seats until they are two and they are pretty much in booster seats until they turn 21 now.
On top of that, you only ever really get one shot at being a parent. You might get a couple tries with different kids, but each kid is only ever a baby once.
So give the parents a break. They've never done this before, are sleep deprived, are the scourge of all the non-parents in the grocery store, and all they really want to do is go home, drink a beer, watch a TV show that doesn't involve a super hero named 'Word Girl' from the planet Lexicon, fall asleep, and not get woken up by a 30 lb bouncing bundle demanding pancakes at 5AM on a Saturday.
Usually the answer to the question of "Is it enviornment or genetics?" is YES.