Possible therapy takes bite out of peanut allergy

WASHINGTON — Scientists have the first evidence that life-threatening peanut allergies may be cured one day.

A few kids now are allergy-free thanks to a scary treatment — tiny amounts of the very food that endangered them.

Don't try this at home. Doctors monitored the youngsters closely in case they needed rescue, and there's no way to dice a peanut as small as the treatment doses required.

But over several years, the children's bodies learned to tolerate peanuts. Immune-system tests show no sign of remaining allergy in five youngsters, and others can withstand amounts that once would have left them wheezing or worse, scientists reported Sunday.

Are the five cured? Doctors at Duke University Medical Center and Arkansas Children's Hospital must track them years longer to be sure.

"We're optimistic that they have lost their peanut allergy," said the lead researcher, Dr. Wesley Burks, Duke's allergy chief. "We've not seen this before medically. We'll have to see what happens to them."

More rigorous research is under way to confirm the pilot study, released Sunday at a meeting of the American Academy of Asthma and Immunology. If it pans out, the approach could mark a major advance for an allergy that afflicts 1.8 million people in the United States.

For parents of these little allergy pioneers, that means no more fear that something as simple as sharing a friend's cookie at school could mean a race to the emergency room.

"It's such a burden lifted off your shoulder to realize you don't have to worry about your child eating a peanut and ending up really sick," said Rhonda Cassada of Hillsborough, N.C. Her 7-year-old son, Ryan, has been labeled allergy-free for two years and counting.

It's a big change for a child who couldn't tolerate one-sixth of a peanut when he entered the study at age 2 1/2. By 5, Ryan could eat a whopping 15 peanuts at a time with no sign of a reaction.

Not that Ryan grew to like peanuts. "They smell bad," he said matter-of-factly.

Millions of people have food allergies and peanut allergy is considered the most dangerous, with life-threatening reactions possible from trace amounts. It accounts for most of the 30,000 emergency-room visits and up to 200 deaths attributed to food allergies each year. Although some children outgrow peanut allergy, that's rare among the severely affected.