Seattle doctors testing new peanut patch for allergy sufferers
Mar 1, 2015, 8:21 AM | Updated: 8:25 am
About three out of every 500 people in the U.S. are allergic to peanuts. But the Seattle Food Allergy Consortium is part of a promising new study that may bring some help. (AP)
(AP)
The number of kids with peanut allergies has tripled in the last 20 years. About three out of every 500 people in the U.S. are allergic to peanuts. But the Seattle Food Allergy Consortium is part of a promising new study that may bring some help.
Previously, kids with allergies were fed bits of peanuts every day to try and build up a tolerance, but there could be an easier way.
For the last year, the Seattle Food Allergy Consortium
has been part of a new study using the French-designed Viaskin Peanut Patch.
The patch was applied to the skin of children with peanut allergies. Over the course of a year, the amount of peanut protein on each patch was increased slowly.
Seattle Dr. Stephen Tilles explained how the patch works:
“By absorbing it through the skin, the peanut protein will become trapped just under the skin, but not in the bloodstream. Then from there, the immune system is able to actually come in and literally eat the protein and chop it up and then take it back into the body.”
The results? Kids who initially had severe allergic reactions to trace amounts of peanuts could now tolerate the equivalent of 10 whole peanuts.
Dr. Tilles reminds people this first treatment trial and its results don’t necessarily represent a cure for peanut allergies.
“It is, however, a potentially very helpful treatment to give patients reassurance accidental exposure may not cause a reaction.”
Dr. Tilles said peanut allergies are much higher than they were 20 years ago, but why? The leading assumption among doctors is what’s called the hygiene hypothesis.
“[In the] first year of life and after, when they’re not exposed to the right types of organisms like bacteria, their immune system is more apt to develop an allergy,” Tilles said. “Ironically, being raised in a very sanitized environment may actually be a risk factor for food allergies and other allergies.”
Phase three in the Viaskin Peanut Patch trial will begin this summer. If successful, it could be on the market by 2018.
