Babies who have a peanut allergy are now being offered free and potentially life-changing treatment at hospitals across Australia in a world-first programme aimed at building tolerance.
CNN reports that it is the first time that a nationwide peanut oral immunotherapy programme is being introduced into mainstream care anywhere in the world, according to the partnership between Australia’s National Allergy Centre of Excellence (NACE) and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI).
The ADAPT OIT Programme is open to infants under 12 months who have been diagnosed with a peanut allergy and who are under an allergy specialist at one of the 10 paediatric hospitals across five states that are participating.
The treatment, free for those deemed eligible, will see patients receiving “a carefully planned daily dosing schedule of peanut powder, taken at home, over two years”.
The overall aim is to transform the approach to the allergy from one of strict avoidance of peanuts to safely building up a tolerance – and hopefully achieving remission.
“Ultimately, we want to change the trajectory of allergic disease in Australia so that more children can go to school without the risk of a life-threatening peanut reaction,” said Professor Kirsten Perrett, director of the NACE and population allergy lead at MCRI.
She said they were expecting demand to be high.
“Australia is the allergy capital of the world. We have 5m people with allergic disease and peanut allergy affects around 3% of 12-month-old children in the country. We expect there to be hundreds of babies who will get treated in the first couple of years.”
Funded by Australia’s federal government, the results of the programme will be evaluated by the NACE in the hope of rolling it out to more hospitals and allergy clinics if it proves successful. Eventually, it may even be extended to older children, but for now the focus is on babies, said Perrett.
Earlier this year a study by experts in London revealed that feeding children smooth peanut butter during infancy and early childhood can help reduce their risk of developing a peanut allergy even years later.
The research showed that, when compared with avoiding peanuts, consumption beginning early in infancy and continuing until around five years old was linked to a 71% reduced rate of peanut allergy among adolescents in the United Kingdom.
In 2000, the American Academy of Paediatrics recommended delaying the introduction of peanuts until the age of three, but it ended that recommendation in 2008.
About a decade later, in 2019, the AAP updated its guidance to say that delaying the introduction of allergenic foods doesn’t prevent disease and that “there is now evidence that early introduction of peanuts may prevent peanut allergy”.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Peanut allergy breakthrough in US skin patch trial
Oral immunotherapy to induce peanut allergy remission in young children – IMPACT trial
Boiled peanuts conquer children’s allergy – Australian study