Got Peanut Allergies? There’s a Patch to Lessen Your Body’s Reaction
We know a friend or two who is allergic to peanuts. Even a small amount of peanut intake or even contact triggers a reaction, often itchiness and skin spots. Now there’s a wearable that lessens the severity of these reactions.
Developed by French company DBV Technologies, the patch contains sprayed-on samples of peanut protein that enters into the immune system. Once these samples are already absorbed, the allergen from peanuts never reach the blood stream, which would ultimately give the allergic reaction.
Doctors call this process of delivering the drug targeting the immune system as the “epicutaneous immunotherapy.”
This is far from the conventional solution to lessen peanut allergies reaction which is desensitization, which is a process in which you gradually introduce small amounts of the allergen into your body – meaning that you actually eat the peanuts. But there is a high level of risk in this method as it can cause an allergic reaction that spreads throughout the body through the blood stream.
Other methods of treating peanut allergies are centered in treating the symptoms rather than the allergy itself. That includes using antihistamines like Benadryl or shots of epinephrine.
The patch was proven to work in the experiment conducted, with data introduced at the recent American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology conference.
DBV Technologies revealed that 83% of children ages 6 to 11 who took part in the trial could eat 1000 milligrams of peanuts without having an allergic reaction after wearing a patch for three years. This is the phase two data.
In comparison, only 100 milligrams can be handled by the participants upon joining the trial. The phase two data is 10 times more.
People ages 6 to 55 were observed in the study but it is worth noting that the best responses came from children on the trial.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 4-6% of children in the US have food allergies, with peanuts being one of the worst offenders. Meanwhile, Child Stats.gov indicates that about 1.5 million children in the U.S. are allergic to peanuts.
Source: Business Insider
