By Scarlett Mora, Age 11
Nut allergies are so common that “one in 200 adults and one in 50 children are allergic to peanuts,” according to the BBC. “Peanut allergy is very common in children and almost never goes away,” Stephen Till, the director of a clinical trial on peanut allergies in London, told the BBC.
Chris, an adult who is allergic to peanuts, is a patient in professor Till’s trial. Once, Chris accidentally ate a dish that had peanuts in it at his local Indian restaurant. His reaction was that he had spots on his lips, he started vomiting, he felt his throat close up, and he got hives all around his body.
The trial Chris participated in used exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is when patients are given a small amount of peanuts, which slowly increases to a bigger amount of peanuts. This is a type of immunotherapy in which a patient is building resistance to an allergy. In the trial, the doctors started by giving him a fraction of a milligram of peanut powder. After he didn’t react to it, they built up the peanuts and, by the end, gave him five whole peanuts. To still keep up his stamina, he eats four peanuts every morning. Though it didn’t work for everyone in the study, it changed Chris’s life by reducing his anxiety when going out to eat, and removing his fear of food and traveling.
An allergic reaction affects the body by creating an antibody called immunoglobulin E (IgE), triggering an inflammation response. The usual treatment to respond to allergic attacks is the EpiPen, which quickly reduces inflammation. Scientists are now researching a new antibody that could target IgE and stop allergies at their source.
Along with finding cures for peanut allergies, scientists are also trying to discover why people get peanut allergies in the first place. Some theories are that it’s due to genetics or changing gut microbiomes, according to Scientific American. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, claims that peanut allergies are caused by childhood vaccines, but there is no evidence for this. Now the Trump administration is also putting “peanut allergies” on a list of words that will receive extra scrutiny for funding, according to Tom Lum in Scientific American. This will slow down research into peanut allergies and make it harder for scientists to find a cure. Because so many people have peanut allergies nowadays, it is important to understand how people get them and what cures are getting developed.
