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New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

nytimes.com

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Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#31

Post by Mvandenbergh »

thanosnose wrote: post #25

Israeli scientists have already shown that early childhood exposure to peanuts can prevent these allergies. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-kids-help-prove-early-... Also, peanut allergies hardly affect anyone. As a society, why waste resources on such endeavors when we have diseases like cancer that affect millions every year?

1) The incidence of peanut allergies has been sky-rocketing.

2) If we could cure cancer with peanut flour, I'm sure we would. Unfortunately that one's a bit harder.

Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#32

Post by kristianc »

Yeah - who'd have thought that exposure to an allergen in small amounts could help build up resistance to that allergen?

The levels of peanut allergies correlates quite heavily with early-years education and parents freaking out about keeping schools and homes a nut-free zone.

Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#33

Post by freehunter »

Nasrudith wrote: post #15
tikkabhuna wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met someone who worked on the admin side of NHS trials. They said exactly what you posted, anything noteworthy that happens should be reported. If you take the placebo and get hit by a bus outside the hospital, it should be reported. That way if 10% of patients in the study get hit by a bus they have more data. Obviously a silly example but if things aren't reported because they don't appear to be connected to the…

The funny thing is that such "irrelevant" data may hint at something real if it happens frequently enough. Like the whole Parkinson's medication with increases urge to gamble as a side effect. That sounds like somebody in a clinical trial making excuses at first glance.

Exactly. If people taking a drug tend to get hit by a bus more frequently, it could actually indicate that the drug increases risky behavior, decreases peripheral vision, causes lapses in attention span, etc.

It doesn't mean that getting hit by a bus is a side effect of the medicine, but rather getting hit by a bus is a potential outcome of one of the side effects of the medicine.

Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#34

Post by abcc8 »

phkahler wrote: post #24

>> The goal of the treatment is not to cure the allergy or enable children to eat peanut butter sandwiches, but to reduce the risk that an accidental exposure to trace amounts will trigger a life-threatening reaction in someone with a severe allergy, and relieve the fear and anxiety that go along with severe peanut allergies. If ever a hedge a hedge there was, this is it: This works really well and they can eat a cou…

It would have been unethical to make a less 'hedgey' claim. The authors did not test repeated doses, nor did they test the magnitude, severity, duration, etc of allergic responses.

Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#35

Post by AMerrit »

le-mark wrote: post #18
raverbashing wrote: post #9

I'll make sure my kids eat (some) peanuts/peanut products before they develop an allergy.

Careful with that line of thinking. My son was 6 months old when I gave him a small bit of the peanut butter cookie I was eating. He could have died. I would not wish that experience on anyone.

Very similar experience with my son. We gave him a bamba (an Israeli peanut snack) at 6 months and he had an anaphylactic reaction. Very scary! However, we did get to see an allergist and have been doing OIT (like in the article) with him for the past 3 months now. Soon he'll be taking his doses as portions of bamba, which is very surreal.

Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#36

Post by euphoria »

phkahler wrote: post #24

>> The goal of the treatment is not to cure the allergy or enable children to eat peanut butter sandwiches, but to reduce the risk that an accidental exposure to trace amounts will trigger a life-threatening reaction in someone with a severe allergy, and relieve the fear and anxiety that go along with severe peanut allergies. If ever a hedge a hedge there was, this is it: This works really well and they can eat a cou…

While true, as a parent of someone with a life-threatening milk allergy, I can tell you that even this seemingly minimal outcome were able to be reproduced with consistency, it would be life-changing for my family. The amount of time, anxiety, emotions, and medical payments involved with a life-threatening allergy is staggering.

It does not seem that they are claiming this is dependable as a "cure", but they are claiming that it is dependable for incidental exposure, which seems to be a corollary from the ongoing treatment including eating a peanut a day.

Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#37

Post by AMerrit »

mmikeff wrote: post #7

This sounds very similar to a treatment that my daughter is due to start next year at a Cambridge allergy clinic in the UK. She'll have to take the peanut based medication every day. She will have the initial dose in a hospital in case she has a reaction and then take the remainder of the doses home. Every two weeks we'll go back to the hospital to increase the dose. I'm very excited about the potential for this to k…

We've been doing this with my son here in Canada for the past 3 months. It's pretty scary, but after having multiple people with peanut allergies tell me they wish they could have had this we've hammered down on it. There have been side effects (diarrhea, mild eczema), but they've mellowed out after the first month. I hope things work out for your daughter with the treatment.

Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#38

Post by fnbr »

ggm wrote: post #3

Reading around, this and related OIT work on adults. At least one of the drugs in stage2 trials is also good for asthma. (etokimab) As a partner of somebody with severe nut anaphylaxis I'm heartened by the news but still watching from the sidelines

(I'm also the partner of someone with severe nut anaphylaxis.)

Can you link me to anything? I was pretty discouraged by the result as the article explicitly says that the trial didn't work on adults:

"The treatment was not effective in the small number of adults enrolled in the study."

Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#39

Post by matthewmcg »

We've done this with one of our children who has severe peanut-triggered anaphylaxis. Over the course of about 18 months, the dosage increased from milligram quantities of peanut flour dissolved in water to 3 grams of roasted peanuts. The dose typically doubled each time.

With the initial administration of each up-dose, we would typically see a barely detectable and mild reaction such as hives or coughing. After a few daily treatments at each dosage, there would be no discernible reaction. We have always been aware we were close to the edge of our child's sensitivity because certain things that seem to increase her immune system loading such as having a fever or being exposed to large amounts of seasonal pollen require reducing the dose slightly to avoid reactions.

We have reached a dosage where it is unlikely that our child would ever face a serious reaction from accidental exposure, which is the goal of the treatment.

I hope that the availability of an FDA approved peanut preparation (and patent protection for some elements of this) does not increase the cost of performing this treatment.

Re: New Peanut Allergy Drug Shows ‘Lifesaving’ Potential

#40

Post by jwineinger »

le-mark wrote: post #18
raverbashing wrote: post #9

I'll make sure my kids eat (some) peanuts/peanut products before they develop an allergy.

Careful with that line of thinking. My son was 6 months old when I gave him a small bit of the peanut butter cookie I was eating. He could have died. I would not wish that experience on anyone.

4-6 months is exactly the recommendation now though. See http://peanutallergyfacts.org/resources/prevention-of-peanut... and http://www.allergy.org.au/images/pcc/ASCIA_PCC_Guidelines_Al....

> One of the most significant advances in food allergy occurred with the release of the results from The Learning Early about Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study in early 2015. Led by Dr. Gideon Lack of Kings College in London, LEAP showed a reduction in the development of peanut allergies of up to 86 percent by children who were exposed to peanut protein early

I say this not to diminish the scare you had. My son is allergic to peanuts so I know the fear. But if a population can see 86% reduction in new allergies, I'm all for it.

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