THE ESSENTIAL
- In Europe, food allergy affects more than 3% of adults.
- A total of three people withdrew from the trial due to treatment-related side effects.
Peanut allergy affects 1-3% of children in Western countries. “Boiling peanuts has been shown to yield a hypoallergenic product that may be a safer way to induce desensitization in peanut-allergic patients by first inducing tolerance to boiled peanuts”said researchers at Flinders University in Australia.
70 Peanut Allergic Children Ate Boiled Then Roasted Peanuts
In the context of work published in the journal Clinical & Experimental Allergy, they wanted to assess the effectiveness and safety of this oral immunotherapy, using regular doses of boiled peanuts followed by roasted peanuts to treat this allergy in children. To carry out their study, the scientists recruited 70 children aged 6 to 18 who were allergic to peanuts. The young participants ate peanuts boiled for 12 hours for 12 weeks, then peanuts boiled for 2 hours for 20 weeks and roasted peanuts for 20 weeks, up to a dose of 12 roasted peanuts per day. After this experiment, they underwent an oral food provocation test.
“Oral immunotherapy appears to be effective in inducing desensitization”
“Desensitization was successfully induced in 56 out of 70 participants”, can we read in the searches. According to the results, treatment-related adverse events were reported in 43 volunteers. According to the authors, heat could affect the structure and immunoreactivity of peanuts. “Oral immunotherapy using boiled and then roasted peanuts represents a pragmatic approach that appears to be effective in inducing desensitization and is associated with a favorable safety profile,” concluded the team.