A daily dose of peanut powder could help some children who are allergic to peanuts, according to a pair of U.S. studies that confirm earlier findings, offering hope that a treatment could come soon. In one study, teams at Duke University in North Carolina and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences gave 15 children tiny, but increasing, doses of peanut powder and compared them with eight children who got a placebo.At the end of the year-long study, children given the treatment were on average able to tolerate 15 peanuts before having an allergic reaction.When you take the daily dose it changes your immune system in a certain way and it raises the threshold of how much food it takes to cause a reaction.
In the second study, 12 children treated with peanut powder from age 32 months to 5 years old were monitored to see whether they could safely eat peanuts after the daily treatment stopped. The children were off the treatment for a month before they were given peanuts.
Nine of the 12 now have peanuts in their diets, the researchers reported at a meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in New Orleans.
The research builds on previous studies, in which children were able to tolerate the treatment for more than two years and four appeared to be freed of their peanut allergies.The results are encouraging but more research is needed before an effective treatment can be developed.
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