PPOIT (probiotic with peanut oral immunotherapy) Immunotherapy

"These children had been eating peanut freely in their diet without having to follow any particular program of peanut intake in the years after treatment was completed."
"This is a major step forward in identifying an effective treatment to address the food allergy problem in Western societies."
"The importance of this finding is that these children [in her study] were able to eat peanuts, like children who don't have peanut allergy, and still maintain their tolerant state, protected against reactions to peanut."
Professor Mimi Tang, immunologist/allergist, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Australia

The peanut allergy cure is designed to reprogram the immune system’s response. Photograph: Josh Westrich/Getty Images

Professor Tang designed a research trial where 48 children were given the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus as well as peanuts in steadily increasing amounts daily for a 18-month period, to enable the building of a tolerance for peanuts. A placebo trial took place as well, the aftermath of which was that four percent only of the children in the trial were judged to be tolerant to peanuts post-trial. (At the original trial's conclusion in 2013, 82% of children who received the immunotherapy treatment were deemed tolerant to peanuts, compared with just 4% in the placebo group.)

Her goal was to create a treatment protocol whereby children with severe peanut reactions where death could ensue if a child inadvertently consumed peanuts, would have the end effect of building immunity to such reactions, enabling children to eat a normal diet, including peanuts. Those children involved in the treatment protocol did indeed build the desired immunity to reaction, going on to eat peanuts without fear or consequences. The results of this study were published in Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

The treatment's immune effects lasted for years following the original study, with close to 80 percent of child participants remaining free of peanut reactions four years on. This is a giant step forward given the fact that in recent decades peanut allergies have dramatically increased particularly in Western countries, given that the anaphylactic shock that threatens untreated children has the potential to kill them.

One in thirteen Canadians suffer a food allergy, according to AllerGen NCE Inc., with 1.93 percent -- over 700,000 people -- encumbered with a serious peanut allergy. After Professor Tang's experimental study, her four-year follow-up revealed that the majority of the children completing the study had been enjoying peanuts free of concerns, with over half of the group consuming "moderate- to-large" amounts with no ill effects.

The fact that the probiotic regimen resulted in 82 percent of children with peanut allergies involved with the clinical trial becoming free to eat the legume, bypassing its former allergic effect represented a stunning success. One that leads to hope that further allergy treatment may present with a permanent cure for the allergy to peanuts.