Wouldn’t it be great to have a cure for food allergies? Currently, the only ‘cure’ is complete avoidance with the offending food(s).

There are an abundance of researchers and non-profit organizations trying to find a cure for food allergies, and the hope is that something will break through soon.

Some of the ongoing research is hopeful. Here’s some of the research going on currently in an attempt to cure food allergies:

Denise and David Bunning founded the Food Allergy Project in 2006 to bring together concerned parents, researchers, educators and experts to advocate for increased federal resources for food allergy research and to spur the fundamental scientific studies that are needed to find a cure. In 2009, the Food Allergy Project merged with the Food Allergy Initiative to create the largest private source of funding for food allergy research. The new organization will use the Food Allergy Initiative (FAI) name.

FAI created an Advocacy Steering Committee in 2009 comprised of parent advocates (including myself, Nicole Smith) across the USA with the intention of building a strong nationwide presence for the food allergy community, and to actively seek an increase in federal funding for food allergy research.

Duke University Medical Center’s Food Allergy Initiative is exploring a promising immunotherapy clinical study on both mice and human patients. The study seeks to find better ways to treat allergies by desensitizing allergic patients. Dr. Wesley Burks, chief of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at Duke Medical Center, is part of a potentially groundbreaking study aimed at finding out whether children with peanut allergies can be desensitized to peanuts and eventually cured of the allergy altogether.

The study has children ingesting tiny, precise amounts of peanut flour every day, and gradually increasing the dose every two weeks. Patients are becoming increasingly less sensitive as the study continues. This would NOT be a study to take on in your own home! Patients receiving the peanut flour are closely monitored for hours after each dose, and an abundance of emergency medical care provisions are available should a severe reaction ensue.

Dr. Burks said the therapy works by depleting the body of chemicals that cause allergic reactions. If successful, desensitization therapy should be able to help all different kinds of food allergies. He is currently predicting that there will be a viable treatment for peanut allergies within 5 years! Wouldn’t that be great!! And thanks to a $1.475 million grant from The Food Allergy Project, both egg and milk allergies have also been added to the study.

Currently, the federal government, through the National Institutes of Health, spends less than $17 million per year on food allergy research. That research occurs at a five-institution consortium involving: Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore; Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC; University of Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute, Little Rock; and National Jewish Medical and Research Center, Denver.

National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver has spearheaded a five-year study on more than a thousand kids with atopic dermatitis (eczema) to see if rapid treatment halts the onslaught of allergies. The hospital is comparing traditional steroidal creams (such as Elocon) with a nonsteroidal cream called Elidel. The cream blocks a molecule called Calcineruin, which is a key early activator of the T cells that orchestrate allergic response. Most people have antimicrobial protectors in their skin that act as a first defense against microbial invaders. People who suffer from eczema have low or nonexistent levels of these protectors, and as a result about 90% have Staphylococcus aureus on their skin. Some experts believe staph sets up the immune system for a life of allergies, beginning with rashes and extending to asthma.

Clinical trials of the drug Xolair for peanut allergy were halted earlier in 2006 after two children experienced anaphylactic reactions. The children hadn’t yet been given the drug, but reacted to an oral challenge of peanuts to determine their level of tolerance. The establishment of tolerance levels was required in the enrollment process of the FDA (Food & Drug Administration). The manufacturer of Xolair, Genentech and two others companies, remain committed to continuing the trials, however oral challenges may not be included in the future.

Researchers at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York have been working with two Chinese herbal formulas – one to treat asthma and one to prevent anaphylaxis to peanuts. Participants in the asthma study had results from the Chinese herbs similar to the control group taking the corticosteroid Prednisone. The herb to prevent peanut anaphylaxis has only been studied on mice, yet the herbs completely blocked anaphylaxis for up to six months. Dr. Xiu-Min Li, a leader of the project, has applied to the FDA for human trials, which will hopefully begin in the near future.

In 2007, the NIH released its long-anticipated Report of the NIH Expert Panel on Food Allergy Research, which found that “food allergy has emerged as an important public health problem,” the first such statement from a federal government agency on the issue of life-threatening food allergies. The NIH Report calls for additional NIH-funded research to uncover the causes of food allergy, and for the development of clinical trials and treatments for the life-threatening disease. The NIH released the report on the heels of a May 21 hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee at which Labor-HHS Subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) called the increase in childhood food allergy “alarming.”

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