New hope for peanut allergy sufferers: Doctors at Duke University Medical Center and Arkansas Children's Hospital have developed a method to effectively treat some children with peanut allergies. By giving patients small, gradually increasing doses of the allergen over the course of a year or so, doctors have been able to increase patients tolerance to the allergic substance. Five patients show no lingering immune response to peanuts and several others show greatly reduced reactions. Don't try this at home, folks: this was a highly supervised exercise with immediate medical treatment available in the event of any undesired reactions. Doctors can't and won't use the word "cure" without long-term study and bigger clinical trials, but this is a significant nugget of hope for families dealing with peanut allergies.
Read more about the study here and here. Video here.
-- Admin
Monday, March 16, 2009
Peanut Allergy News
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment