Getting closer to a cure?
It’s not breaking news that oral immunotherapy holds promise for curing food allergies. The treatment involves giving a very tiny amount of the allergen to a patient in a doctor’s office. Then they’re sent home to ingest that same small dose each day. Every few weeks or so, their dosage is increased, until finally, they’re able to tolerate enough of the food to avoid an allergic attack in the case of a trace amount of the food being present in a meal. For example, if someone serves them a scoop of ice cream using the same spoon that dished out the peanut butter flavored ice cream beforehand.
The downside is that the treatment is time consuming — it can take years to build up enough of a tolerance to be considered a success. Now there’s reports that using the asthma drug omalizumab beforehand can speed this process up.
This is all in the early stages, but it’s certainly promising news.