Michael Mosley “Allergies are incredibly common, and worldwide they are on the rise. Some can be fatal. So what can you do about it?” Well, here in the UK, children with a peanut allergy are about to go through a pioneering new treatment.”
Peanut Allergy Treatment
Gabriel Weston “Connie is 12 years old. When she was just two, her mother discovered that she was allergic to peanuts.”
Connie’s mother “She has a life-threatening peanut allergy, which means that her airways could constrict, which means she wouldn’t be able to breathe properly and ultimately she could die because of actually eating a peanut.”
Gabriel Weston “For Connie, even the smallest trace of peanut could trigger a reaction. So things the rest of us take for granted can cause both her and her family serious anxiety.”
Connie “When we’re eating out at restaurants, then I get nervous or a bit frightened cos it’s not my mum cooking the food.”
Gabriel Weston “Allergies like Connie’s can’t be cured and are rarely outgrown. So those who have them have to learn to cope with them for the rest of their lives.
It’s hard to imagine how worrying it must be to have a serious allergy, let alone being the parent of a child who could have a fatal reaction. But, for Connie and her family, that anxiety could soon be over. And that’s because Connie is one of the very first children trying out a ground-breaking new treatment for her peanut allergy.
The treatment is being offered at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, a world-renowned centre for allergy research. Here, doctors are investigating what causes allergic reaction.and how they can be treated.
Today, they’re setting out to trigger a controlled reaction in Richard, who has a peanut allergy. Dr Shelley Dua is supervising.
What’s actually going on inside Richard’s body when he’s having this allergic reaction?
Dr Shelley Dua
Dr Shelley Dua “The body is recognising the peanut as something foreign and your immune system is launching an allergic reaction against it, which basically means that your allergic cells, which are in your mouth, your throat, your stomach, they’re getting activated and releasing chemicals that cause symptoms of an allergic reaction.”
Richard “You’re struggling to breathe, it feels like you’re going to vomit all the time. Your throat feels like it’s swelling and closing up on you.”
Gabriel Weston “Now, the doctors have decided to stop this reaction taking place at this point by giving medication. The drug stops Richard’s immune reaction against the proteins in the peanut. The latest research suggests that allergies like this start in infancy. Remarkably, they may even develop before a baby has ever eaten a peanut.
It’s thought they may arise when a baby’s earliest contact with peanuts is through their skin in products like skin creams or oils, as the immune system doesn’t learn that peanuts are OK to eat.
But the team here believe that they have a treatment that can retrain children’s immune systems. And in many ways, it’s beautifully simple. Patients are given a tiny dose of peanut protein, too small for their bodies to even recognise it as a toxin, and then that dose is built up very, very slowly until patients can tolerate one, two, or even five peanuts without having an allergic reaction.
This principle has already been used to treat allergies like hay fever, but Dr Andrew Clark is now attempting to apply it to potentially fatal food allergies in children like Connie.”
Dr Andrew Clark
Dr Andrew Clark “The aim for us is that you are able to then eat foods that haven’t got buckets of peanuts in. But it’s actually to say, you know, we’ve got this food that says, ‘This may contain traces of peanuts.’ Is it safe to eat? And we think that will be safe for you to eat once you’re treated.”
Gabriel Weston “What people with peanut allergies are actually reacting to are particular proteins that form a large part of the nut. For the treatment, the team have pharmaceutically made peanut protein, and Connie will start by eating the equivalent of just one-hundredth of a nut mixed into yoghurt.
For the first time in ten years, she’s knowingly eating peanut. But she doesn’t react.
Over the next few months, Connie will take a daily dose of peanut, gradually increasing the amount in the hope of building up her body’s tolerance to it. And the technique looks promising.”
Dr Andrew Clark “We performed a really large trial of over 100 children with peanut allergy. We found in the trial that we could get about 80 to 90% of them to eat peanuts on a regular basis. When it worked, it really improved their quality of life.”
Gabriel Weston “Five weeks later, on her third visit, the team up Connie’s dose to one-tenth of a peanut. But amazingly, she still doesn’t have a reaction. This is really encouraging. It show her immune system is becoming more tolerant. And it’s giving her new hope.
Connie “If this works, when I go on school trips and I’m having lunch there, then it will be good not to have the constant worry in the back of your mind - does this have peanuts in? And am I going to react to it?”
Gabriel Weston “Connie’s treatment will last for years, perhaps a lifetime. But the hope is that there could be even greater potential in the future.”
Dr Andrew Clark “The principle of what we’re doing is really important and it can be applied to earlier in life. And it’s possible that eventually, one day, we’ll have a treatment that infants perhaps could have to prevent this happening in the first place.”
Gabriel Weston “Treatments like this one happening here in Cambridge have the potential to change the lives of thousands of patients suffering from severe allergic reaction. And who knows - this research might even one day be able to get to the bottom of what causes allergy in the first place. But for now, what do we do if we witness an allergic reaction?”
References
All of the above information came from the BBC series Trust Me, I’m a Doctor
