One food allergy is enough of a health concern, but when you’re allergic or sensitive to multiple foods, it can really impact on your wellbeing. However, according to new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, taking an asthma drug can desensitise you to several foods at the same time, so meal times don’t have to be such a struggle.
Nutritional wellness expert Erin Digitale, PhD, details, ‘The findings come on the heels of a recent study by the same team showing that people with multiple food allergies can be desensitized to several foods at once. The two studies, both phase-1 safety trials, provide the first scientific evidence that a promising new method for treating people for multiple food allergies works. Patients who took the asthma drug omalizumab became desensitized to multiple food allergens at a median of 18 weeks; those who did not take the drug became desensitized at a median of 85 weeks.’
The studies, the results of which were published in the journal Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology, both used a desensitisation method known as oral immunotherapy. Under a doctor’s supervision in a hospital setting, allergic patients build up tolerance to a food by ingesting it in tiny, gradually increasing doses. Digitale explains, ‘Over time, the body stops reacting, and the patient is able to eat the food safely. Several researchers have shown that this therapy works on a single food allergen, but it had not been tested on multiple food allergens. The Stanford team tried the new technique because nearly four million Americans are allergic to more than one food.’
Study senior author Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD, associate professor of paediatrics at the medical school and an immunologist at Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, recalls, ‘Parents came up to me and said things like, “It’s great that you’re desensitising children to their peanut or milk allergies, but my daughter is allergic to wheat, cashews, eggs and almonds. What can you do about that?”. Digitale notes, ‘Being desensitised to several foods, one at a time, could prospectively take decades. Yet Stanford researchers succeeded in safely desensitising patients to several food allergens at once and were able to speed up desensitisation by supplementing oral immunotherapy with injections of omalizumab (brand name Xolair).’
Digitale outlines, ‘In the earlier study, in which patients were not given omalizumab, 25 children and adults with multiple allergies ate tiny doses of their allergens — as many as five — as highly purified food powders each day. The total dose was evenly divided between the allergens so that each subject got the same total quantity of food protein, regardless of the number of foods they were being desensitized to…The food dose was gradually increased until subjects could eat four grams of each food protein, or up to 20 grams of the allergenic food proteins in total, without experiencing a reaction. This occurred at a median of 85 weeks after food doses began.’
Digitale continues, ‘In the second and most recent study, 25 children and adults with multiple food allergies underwent a similar protocol — but with an additional step. Eight weeks before being introduced to food allergens, the patients began receiving injections of omalizumab. This drug reduces activity of the body’s IgE molecules, the antibodies involved in allergic responses, and had been shown in a previous Stanford study to speed the success of oral immunotherapy for children with milk allergies. Patients getting omalizumab tolerated larger initial doses of allergens than those in the non-omalizumab study, and desensitisation progressed faster…This occurred at a median of 18 weeks after the food doses began.’
