By Dan Wells
Published: May. 21, 2024 at 1:14 PM EDT
CINCINNATI (WXIX) - Peanut allergies affect millions of kids in the United States and scientists and doctors in Cincinnati are working to help those dealing with it.
One in 50 children in the U.S. is allergic to peanuts, while one in 200 adults has the allergy.
Peanut allergies have more than tripled over the past 20 years and nobody really knows why.
However, several breakthroughs are happening in Cincinnati.
When it comes to helping people with peanut allergies, like Kaleb Billeter, the goal for so many is to one day be able to eat whatever they like without the fear of an allergic reaction.
“When Kaleb was six months old, he broke out into hives all over his chest, torso, face,” recalls Kaleb’s mom, Elizabeth Billeter.
The hives were the first sign of a dangerous peanut allergy.
Kaleb was treated with a peanut patch.
He wore it every day for several months, hoping it would help him tolerate a small number of peanuts without reacting.
“You see, in our allergy clinic, we have about 10,000 patients a year and about 60 to 70% of them come to us for food allergy,” Cincinnati Children’s Division of Allergy and Immunology Associate Director Dr. Amal H. Assa’ad explains.
At Cincinnati Children’s, they are treating a lot of people for various allergies.
“Years ago, we had one option which was avoid the food carry epinephrine,” says Dr. Assa’ad. “This remains an option and remains almost like the gold standard, but now we have a lot of other options and one of them is to first participate in clinical trials that are ongoing that are looking for other methods of managing food allergies, whether it’s desensitization, increasing the level of tolerance, or blocking the allergy antibodies.”
Thankfully, those trials are producing options.
“There are actually two medications, and I’ll call them medications for now, that have been approved by the FDA,” explains Dr. Assa’ad. “For the treatment of with allergy particularly, the one is for peanut allergy, which is palforzia, which is a peanut powder of flour that is very strictly found manufactured and measured. That taken over quite a bit of time on a particularly strict protocol of increasing the amounts every couple of weeks and so on does raise the threshold of reactivity, which means that if a patient would react to having a peanut after they undergo this treatment, they may be able to tolerate up to a peanut or even six peanuts or more.”
Another newer treatment being used is called oral immunotherapy.
“We here at Cincinnati Children’s have done many of the clinical trials with palforzia, actually from the beginning to the end, and have also fashioned a clinical protocol that addresses the same issue but has more flexibility of being clinical as well as utilization of food off the shelf,” says Dr. Assa’ad. “So, it still called oral immunotherapy and for short, we call it OIT.”
University of North Carolina School of Medicine Pediatric Allergist Dr. Edwin Kim adds, “The kids eat that peanut flour in small increasing amounts to try to retrain their immune system and make them less reactive.”
Now, researchers across the country are working with a toothpaste that could one day help prevent severe allergic reactions by triggering the immune cells in our mouths.
“Maybe if we take the peanut and then put it in a form of toothpaste that coats the whole inner side of the mouth, we can take advantage of those immune cells, get the benefit that we want,” Dr. Kim says.
Dr. Assa’ad says this possibility is in the early stages.
“So, I think that toothpaste being a possibility is still way at the beginning of, you know trials, but the idea is based on the idea that you can also put the food in the mouth without being swallowed, which is called sublingual immunotherapy, and that has been tested as well,” Dr. Assa’ad explains. “It has less efficacy, but it has less side effects as well. So, with food allergy treatments, it’s always a balance of treatment and changing the immune system versus side effects.”
Contact Cincinnati Children’s Allergy and Immunology department to find out more information about the options out there.
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