Peanut Allergy News

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

Let them eat cake -- at home

An article about a New Zealand school district that banned birthday cake caught my eye for a couple of reasons.

1. It was filed under "Odd News." What's so odd about school districts taking steps to encourage healthful habits?
2. The article doesn't mention another important health-related reason to ban birthday cakes and other outside foods: life-threatening food allergies. Policing food from home is a burden on both parents and teachers in allergy-aware programs. Parents must find and make recipes that fit the specific criteria (i.e., no peanut products, wheat, gluten, eggs, etc.) and document this fact to teachers. Teachers must remind parents of the policies and try to ensure that nothing slips through; if a child has an allergic reaction to food from home, the teachers must sleuth out the source and deal with that crisis.
3. Birthday parties (at home and school) can quickly become a contest of parenting prowess, with families increasingly upping the ante with more extravagant treats or other celebrations at school in addition to whatever they do at home. What about the kids whose parents can't or don't buy into that rigamarole?

The Gretchen's House Foo0d From Home Policy was developed with input from physicians, teachers, and parents with all of the above concerns in mind. You can read all about it here.

--H.V.