Doctors have seen promising results in children with peanut intolerance when they treated them with small doses of the allergen, an approach similar to one a homeopath would take.
Experiments conducted at Duke University Medical Center and Arkansas Childrens Hospital relied on a carefully administered daily dose of peanuts and resulted in the participating children being able to eat peanuts without a fear of a life-threatening reaction.
The doses started as small as 1/1000 of a peanut. After several months, the children were able to consume up to 15 peanuts per day before an adverse reaction began.
The children continued on that daily therapy for several years and are still monitored closely.
“[These results] give other parents and children hope that well soon have a safe, effective treatment that will halt allergies to certain foods,” says Dr. Wesley Burks, chief of the Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at Duke.
However, despite the promise of this new health resource in the treatment of peanut allergies the doctors caution that more studies need to be done to ensure that the changes resulted from a true immune response rather than from the natural process of outgrowing certain allergies.
