The first time I heard about peanut desensitization using Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) was through my husband sometime last year. He had been super excited to share about this new treatment that could potentially eliminate our daughter’s life-threatening peanut allergy; except it required her to be exposed to the very thing that could end her life – peanuts. My first reaction was not excitement, it was fear. We had been so used to keeping our daughter away from peanuts, and teaching her to be vigilant and cautious about peanut exposure, that the idea of putting even one sliver of it in her mouth terrified me. We talked about it a little, but not much came of it.

Fast forward to this year, when we found out a friend’s son went through the treatments and his peanut allergy is almost 100% gone. This was two years in the making, but their success definitely piqued my interest, and gave me a more open mind to the idea. It would be amazing if we didn’t have to live in so much fear over peanut exposure. This would be worth it if I didn’t have to worry about her during travel or going over to friends’ homes, or just any time I can’t keep as close a watch on her.

Thus, I started my research.  What does it involve?  How long would it take?  How does this work?  All of these questions ran through my mind and more.

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The treatment involves retraining the immune system to adapt to the allergen by actually ingesting the allergen. The patient starts off with microdoses of the allergen, then slowly increasing the amounts, until the patient is eventually able to handle regular-sized servings of the allergen. On average, this whole process takes about 29 months.

Oral Immunotherapy doesn’t just treat those with peanut allergies, it can also help those with other food allergies, such as egg, wheat, dairy, shellfish, and other nuts. The premise is the same – start off with minuscule amounts of the allergenic food, then increase it little by little until the body is better able to tolerate the allergen. Once someone goes down this path though, they will need to regularly and continuously eat the allergen in question in order to keep up the desensitization, or else the allergies can return full force.

There is one renowned doctor in Southern California who does Oral Immunotherapy, and he has a 99% success rate.  We’ve signed Noelle up for the waiting list to explore this as a possible option for the treatment of her peanut allergy. We are currently #774 on the waiting list, so there is quite a demand for it. Though we only signed her up last month, the wait list is now nearing 1000. We probably won’t be getting in any time soon… but the studies and research for this are promising, so we’d like to know more.

Have you heard of Oral Immunotherapy or do you know anyone who has successfully done it?

Sources:

https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/oral-immunotherapy-safe-effective-treatment-peanut-allergic-preschoolers-study-suggests

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00932828

https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2014fall/i-can-eat-it.html