Monday, March 9, 2009
The blogosphere has been buzzing with stories about this recent British study utilizing peanuts and peanut flour as a means to help severely peanut-allergic children develop a tolerance to the food. Now it's my turn, since I have a personal stake in this story. Our new allergist mentioned "immunotherapy" to me at our last visit.
Read the link to learn more. The study was very small and one child did go into anaphylaxis from this "treatment."
I know that some of you out there have had good results from peanut desensitization and I'm very happy for you. If we can find a way to help our kids either minimize or eliminate severe allergic reactions to peanuts, that's great news.
However, it's very early days for these studies. And I have a lot of questions. My daughter is so allergic to peanuts (and remembers her first reaction very well--it happened at age 4) that she is repelled by the taste, smell and appearance of them. For example, before we knew she had the allergy, she would complain about the smell of anyone who had recently eaten peanut butter, she rejected bowls of nuts on sight alone (thank goodness for that, in retrospect) and once, when she had taken a bite of a Mr. Goodbar candy bar, she ran to the bathroom and spit and scraped every bit of the peanut residue from her mouth (before swallowing any). I was unfamiliar with peanut allergies in those good old days, so while I found it unusual, I didn't realize these were red flag peanut allergy symptoms. I just thought she didn't like them.
So back to the study. How can I ask a child like this to willingly eat peanuts? It not only goes against what I've told her for years, but she is repelled by them physically.
My point is: this won't work for everyone. Stories about studies like this, while heartening for some, make me a little concerned that now everyone will be like: why don't you give your kid peanuts and "cure" them? There are already so many nuances with regard to explaining a nut allergy--now we add this one.
As the study also illustrates, even all of those participants weren't amenable to this immunotherapy. One child needed an Epi Pen--how would you like that to be your child? You just endangered their life.
Also, I'm not so big on making human beings into guinea pigs. So even though I want to find a cure as much as anyone, I've got some compelling questions for my doctor.
Just as two people may not have the same severity of any medical condition, they also won't all respond equally to the same treatment. It's a tough call--and one we're all going to have to make as more research is done. What do you think?