A Solution For Peanut Allergies?
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008Doctors and scientists are working hard to find a solution to peanut allergies. Two approaches look promising: oral immunotherapy and the development of an allergy-free peanut.
As I’ve written before, I am optimistic about oral immunotherapy. So is Dr. Wesley Burks, food allergy expert at Duke University Medical Center, an integral researcher at one of the five research centers conducting the oral immunotherapy trials. According to Reuters, Dr. Burks says that immunotherapy may be available within the next five years.
On to the allergy-free peanut. The good news at least two universities are doing groundbreaking work to develop an allergy-free peanut: N.C. A&T’s School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, through a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) grant, and the University of Georgia through a grant from the Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture. If these university research trials are successful, how might this work and how fast would this come to market? A University of Florida newsletter reports:
The next step would then be trying to find or create other stand-ins for the usual suspects of peanut allergens. If that were accomplished, then they would all have to be put together to produce a peanut plant that would replace those used by peanut farmers today.
“Don’t look for this to be something that you’ll see in the next twenty years or so,” said Peggy Ozias-Akins, a peanut genome researcher at the University of Georgia. “There’s a lot of genetics groundwork that we still have to lay before we even know if something like this can be done.
In addition to the long-time horizon, I am a skeptic of the allergy-free peanut. Why? I am guessing that it will be costlier than regular peanuts. Therefore, I would suspect that conventional peanuts will continue to be used by large-scale manufacturers in the products my daughter’s peers eat. So, even if there is a “peanut”-butter she will be able to eat — she will still be eating it by herself at a nut-free table while other kids enjoy their conventional peanut butter and jelly.
I guess five years isn’t so long to wait for oral immunotherapy. Just in time for my second child to enter kindergarten.