I live in Canada. My grand daughter was born with a very severe peanut allergy. At 12 yrs.of age she was at first diagnosed as too severe for the same experimental study as described in this article. But the decision makers made an exception, and she was allowed into the 1 year program at McMaster University Hospital in Hamilton Ontario. Even though she hated having to eat even a minute amount of peanut, she dutifully followed the protocol, with successful results. Today, at 15, she can thankfully participate fully, without fear, in all her many teenage activities. However, for the rest of her life she must eat the equivalent of at least 1 peanut but no more than 6 peanut equivalents a day or she will be back to 'square one'. What a relief for her and all her loved ones!
@Donna Grebenc. Forgot to mention that she stills has to keep her epi pen on hand.
My daughter has very severe, life-threatening allergies to peanuts and tree-nuts. We have used epinephrine several times because of severe allergic reactions. For her it was a matter of when, not if. Then she went through OIT (in Dallas- the therapy, not a study) and now her life has changed so much. She trick or treated and got to keep her candy. We can eat out. She can go to a birthday party and eat what the other kids are eating instead of feeling isolated. It was not an easy process - at all. She did have reactions and required epinephrine a couple of times during the therapy, but it was much better to have it in a controlled environment than by accidental ingestion. The team here in Dallas is very accessible and managed the therapy very carefully and still monitors her while on her maintenance dose. It's not a cure and she still always has her medicine with her, but she feels so much more free to enjoy life. I cannot even express how much this therapy has changed her life. We've watched several of her friends go through it as well and the change in these children as they overcome this debilitating allergy is mind blowing. We have done the therapy with just the foods, which works for us because then there is no prescription to fill (other than the annual epi of course) and we can get peanuts and tree nuts anywhere. She's been done with the therapy for more than 18 months and I'm so thankful for the option.
Private practice OIT (oral immunotherapy treatment) has been around for quite sometime now...using real food. No need for pills. Our 12 yo son has had two anaphylactic reactions to cross contamination with peanuts when he was younger. We have always avoided any food or restaurant with the allergen. Our son has been under our allergists’ care, who is knowledgeable in OIT, for almost a year now. He has been dosing on real foods and is now able to updose on actual peanuts each week. Such a life changer for him and for us. No need for pills or putting more money into big pharma. Visit OIT.org to learn more about this protocol that has already been around for quite sometime.
2
@Joyce Thank you and to the others that are bringing this up.
I am an adult that has been through one OIT trial done at Stanford (which was unfortunately not successful), and then went through private practice rapid desensitization OIT with Zolair, which has been successful. I now eat 2 peanuts a day to maintain my desensitization and no longer have to live in constant fear of accidental exposure. I wish the NYT would do some deeper digging on some of the truly amazing advances that are happening in this field, instead of just reporting on a "drug" that is simply precisely metered doses of peanut protein. I believe the FDA has also recently allowed for the study of Zolair to be used in clinical trials in the USA, which should eventually allow for insurance to be billed instead of having to pay out of pocket as is often the case currently. What about the advances that Australia has already made in this field?
So, can we have peanuts on airplanes again, now? ;-)
1
Not cute. The answer is no. You can't do this any more than you can run over people in wheelchairs with your car just because some people with impairments have learned to walk with prostheses. The winky smiley does not reduce the menace in your words.
OIT isn’t new. The revolutionary thing about this study is the possibility of bringing it to the masses.
There are lots of allergists around the country who already offer OIT: some even promise the holy grail of food allergy: so-called “free eating” after treatment.
Patients often travel hundreds or thousands of miles for OIT. Some fly in from overseas.
I really wish NYT would have discussed this here. Many parents of children with food allergies aren’t aware that a treatment already exists- and not just for peanut. Often after diagnosis, people are just told to avoid the food, given epipens, and sent on their way to play a constant game of Russian roulette.
As a parent of two children with food allergies, this issue is at the forefront of my mind every day. Even the most careful planning and communication has not kept my children free from reactions. My family is isolated and very stressed because of this cruel disease.
I know plenty of people in the food allergy community are not impressed with FARE- which for some reason downplays OIT and here pretends that it is something new. Why is this? If this group is truly interested in the best interests of patients, OIT and other treatments and cures must be the priority.
Question about "The treatment was not effective in the small number of adults enrolled in the study."
Does this mean after 18 the condition is permanent and the treatment won t work? Is anything being done about that?
Father of a 20 year old with a peanut allergy
1
OIT has been around for years and it can be done with REAL FOOD. There is no need for pills or any involvement from big pharma. OIT with knowledgeable allergists should be approved by the FDA without involvement of more drugs/pills. It is extremely unnecessary and will probably be sold at an expensive price for no reason.
1
A new way for pharma companies to make money.
My daughter has gone through real FOOD oral immunotherapy with a private practice OIT allergist (www.oit101.org). I love the mainstream attention being given to OIT and that this child was helped, but this company is turning food into a pharmaceutical. Private practice OIT is based on a decade of research and is customized to the patient. It does not result in 14% anaphalaxis. They start with microscopic doses to keep patients SAFE! Second, it uses real food... my daughter's maintenance cost is less than $100 per year of buying real nuts at Costco. This "drug" which is peanut flour will incur an ongoing cost for graduates of $300-$400 per MONTH. Oral immunotherapy is a process, not a drug, so it cannot be FDA approved. This company is trying to profit off of a process that already exists by turning food into a drug. That is a slippery slope and something everyone should be concerned about.
8
This article is incredibly misleading. Their "drug" is nothing more than peanut protein. This treatment has been studied for over 10 years with real food, which is much cheaper than a "drug". It's called Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) and allergists all across the country are rolling this treatment out to patients. My daughter is undergoing this treatment using egg in Suffern, NY at a fraction of what the pharma companies will charge once they receive approval for their "drugs" (I'm sure they will move on to other allergies after peanut). As soon as she completes egg, we will move on to peanut. Our physician follows the protocol of Dr. Wasserman in Texas who has been doing this treatment for years. I'm glad we've started (I watched and waited until I was sure the treatment was safe) and we'll be done before pharma starts overcharging and making treatment inaccessible to many allergy sufferers.
4
Or you can work with one of the many private practice allergists who, for years, have been successfully doing oral immunotherapy (desensitizing) using simply the food and therefore bypassing the pharma industry. My son is in this therapy now and successfully eating 8 peanuts a day. No expensive drugs. Just peanuts under very controlled doctor supervision.
5
@Jillian - Yes it does seem like that the pharma market it trying to break into the desensitization therapy market which has been happening for years. It does seem to be a good idea to have extremely specific dosing - but too bad that the pharma industry will probably charge over $1,000 per dose. The problem with the pharmaceutical industry is that it is only about money. What about the pride and dignity that comes from helping millions of people?
2
This is NOT new. Private Practice OIT has been done for years now. And Private Practice OIT is customized to the individual so anyone can do it, there is no such thing as too “severe” of an allergy. And it brings you to FREE EATING where you can eat your allergen freely. My 2 year old daughter completed OIT for peanuts earlier this year, her bloodwork went negative after and she can eat all the peanuts she wants now. This can be done for all kinds of common allergens. You can find allergists that offer it at OIT101.org.
8
There's a word for this: mithridatism.
@EW Exactly. I had to look that up. :) And you need an actual allergist because anaphylaxis is too risky.
Because it seems many still do not know: OIT (the treatment featured in this article) is available NOW, offered by many board-certified allergists in nearly every major metro area in the US. Some benefits of private practice OIT over Aimmune's product (the one mentioned in the article): 1) Private practice OIT uses real foods that are cheap and easily available at your local grocery store. 2) Allergists offering private practice OIT are able to adjust the dosage to your child's body, making the process smoother and more effective than the "peanut pill." 3) Allergists offering OIT can (and do) treat a variety of allergens, not just peanut. My son completed OIT for egg, peanut, and hazelnut with Dr. Stacy Silvers at Texan Allergy. He began egg OIT in 2015 and peanut and hazelnut OIT concurrently in 2016. He's been in maintenance for egg for three years and for peanuts and hazelnuts for two years. He's lived a life of complete freedom from his food allergies for YEARS now, all while this product was still under development.
7
Incredibly important to understand the risks while celebrating these positive outcomes. And these are positive outcomes! Seeing 14% of patients in the active treatment group needing epinephrine definitely underscores the importance of initiating this in a controlled setting with a quality product. Thanks to the study volunteers, researchers and the company for contributing what will likely be a substantial advancement in healthcare!!
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@Steve Rizk This is a study so they are seeking data as to whether their product will work. The protocol the same researchers created back in 2009 worked very well and it's the basis of what the Private Practice OIT Allergists have been using for the last decade. We do not see that much epi use or severe reactions in private practice because our doctors measure the doses at much lower levels to avoid reactions. And our doses use real food that doesn't cost $5-10k the first 6 months and $400/mo for life.
The worse part is the researchers have withheld this info for a decade until they could develop the drug version. More$ + MoreEpi which = More$
But thankfully you can go to a private practice oit allergist now and be desensitized using real food. That is how it should be.
1
My daughter is the kid who needed 3 epi pens and went into anaphylaxis. I still don't like to think or talk about that day. The stinger is that she was eliminated from the study, which would've otherwise (eventually) given her access to the treatment, which is why we made the choice in the first place, for her to participate. I still struggle with putting her at risk like that, but we are thinking long-term and really hoped that early access to the treatment would help her for life. I had concerns that I raised at the time, about how her "in test" was conducted, and the timing of the first epi pen shots (delayed). Anyway, I've always wondered about the exceptions, like my daughter in this case, and so when I read this article tonight I realized it was her. She is a brave, brave kid.
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And you’re a brave parent. What a scary day for both of you and what a terrible disappointment. I hope the study continues to follow up with you: it’s really important to understand the negative results and the outliers from trials.
I have some allergies, not like peanut, and my husband has quite severe food allergy. I received epinephrine as a child for asthma. I was very young, maybe 3 or 4. I’ll remember it until I die. We forget when we talk about the epipen that it’s the same “adrenaline” hormone that our body secretes in panic or emergency: liquid, instant fear. Works great to save a life. But I’ll never forget the shaking and the terror that went along with being able to breathe.
10
@Chris This study (in which your daughter reacted so severly) started with a 3 mg dose. My kids started with 0.8 mg and had fairly signficant reactions at that dose. I can’t imagine what 3 mg would have resulted in if they were dosed with that amount the first time. 3 mg just seems too high for an allergy as extreme as your daughter’s.
I hope you can try it again, starting at a much lower dose. I hope you can find an allergist to work with you. Ours is through Stanford and they in general have been very competent during the treatment. My son had a previously unseen reaction which may or may not have been due to the treatment, and there was some hesitation as to whether they would continue, but in the end they did.
I feel for you and your daughter. That experience must have been frightening, only to be ejected from the study.
22
@Desire Trails I tried to post a comment that included the timeline of my daughter's dosages, symptoms and treatments. But it hasn't appeared; maybe one of the symptoms triggered a blacklist as a bad word? Her dosages went way beyond 3 mg, unfortunately, and then the epi pens were delayed too long, IMO.
3
We have been waiting for this treatment to be approved by the FDA for years for our daughter. Finally it seems like a closer reality! It is not a cure, but even if it is a little bit of tolerance to peanut, it is better than nothing. Please FDA, hurry. There are millions of Americans who could benefit from this life-saving therapy.
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@Chocolate: You can benefit from it right now. As the article makes clear, they are basically just feeding the kids small amount of peanut. There are allergists right now who are offering this-- without the pharmaceutically-altered product. See OIT101.org for a list of providers.
9
@MR There are many doctors (ours included) who are uncomfortable offering OIT until more rigorous trials, like the one in this article, are finished. Lack of FDA approval also makes the cost difficult for many families (we were quoted $500/month for 2 years for our daughter when we explored it).
1
@MR Brava! THIS!
2
Eight years ago, when my peanut-allergic daughter was 5, she participated in a controlled study in which she was gradually, over the course of several months, introduced with peanuts, starting with micro-grams of peanut flour. Ever since then she has been eating 3 peanut M&Ms a day to maintain her tolerance. She can be around people eating peanut butter, eat foods "processed in a facility with peanuts" and generally lead as close to a non-allergic life as possible. At 13 she still carries an epi-pen, but the weight of worrying about her accidentally eating peanuts has been lifted. It was scary to start the process, but it has been truly life-changing for her and us.
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Well done, WJ.
6
63 year old here, who’s had peanut allergy essentially since birth, according to mother - rash when touching peanut, firm refusal to eat peanut products as a toddler, and anaphylaxis when Mom forced me to eat my first bite of peanut butter at age 2-3 because “all children love peanut butter”. Guess I showed her. And my mom ate peanut butter by the spoonful all the time, including while pregnant.
Anyway, who knows why there is more peanut allergy now. I doubt there is a simple answer. But if this treatment proves to be as effective as it seems, it’s a great thing for children, who are not as able to control their food environment as adults are. I don’t eat out much because of all the creative ways chefs use peanuts these days, potlucks are a nightmare, and peanut flour in processed food is a growing trend. Luckily I am a great cook.
This treatment would have made my life so much better. Living in fear of food has negative effects on many aspects of life; anxiety over severe allergies can bleed over to the rest of your life. You learn to cope, but few people understand.
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@KathyGail
Kathy - Thank you for your comments. I understand your situation completely! My son has severe allergies to all finned and shell fish and it impacts his young adult life in ways I never imagined possible. He cannot casually go out with friends for a meal because of his allergy concerns and trips out of town take pre-planning to be sure restaurants understanding of such allergies can be found. Aside from that, is the mental/emotional toll "living different" entails. As you said, one learns to cope, but it takes a whole lot for others to understand and empathize.
This article gives us a glimmer of hope that soon treatments for other serious allergies will be discovered and become a common course of treatment. Can't happen soon enough!
12
Born in the mid 70s, breastfed as an infant, played outside in the dirt, raised with both a cat and dog in the house, and I still have a host of environmental and food allergies, including peanut and fish/shellfish. I remember kids taunting me with their PB&Js and Reese's at the lunch table in elementary school - none of them understood how serious food allergies could be. On Southwest flights my nose would get congested and I'd get weezy until I finally realized it was likely due to the peanut dust when everyone opened their snacks. I started declaring Peanut Dust Allergy when I flew and those issues immediately stopped. Despite diligently reading ingredient labels and verifying with servers at restaurants, I've had several accidental ingestions over the years. Thankfully none have required my EpiPen, though my last peanut encounter nearly did and the next accidental ingestion possibly will. I'm thrilled for today's kids who have a chance to not worry about a small ingestion of peanut with this new treatment. However, I'm left asking what about the adults who also deal with this allergy? Are there any similar treatments under investigation for us? While adults might not have as many potential avenues for accidental ingestion as kids, it can and does still occur. Having that small buffer of tolerance would be a big relief for adults as well.
7
I don’t know if I would consider the treatment at this stage in my life or not, since I manage well. But it would be so nice to go to an Asian restaurant, or to feel that I could confidently travel to a country that uses peanuts in much of its cuisine. Even with Epipen, I can’t imagine having a severe reaction in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language.
And I’m sure you know well what a pain it is to carry an Epipen and Benadryl or liquid Zyrtec with you all the time, just in case.
2
Peanuts apparently originated in South America. If peanut allergy has always been present, but in the past, its young victims would have just died, then their susceptibility would have eventually been removed from the gene pool. Any surviving indigenous populations that still eat peanuts should be allergy free, no? And if someone from one of those groups does come down with a peanut allergy, say after emigrating to the US, then it means its something besides the peanut that's causing it.
I'll wait for a cure or treatment that doesn't necessitate the regular ingestion of peanuts. I find the smell of peanut butter repugnant!
@Blue Jay
I hear you. The smell makes me queasy. Maybe it’s a learned response.....but I can smell peanuts on someone’s breath from 10 feet away. My kind husband gave up eating peanuts, peanut M&Ms a long time ago because he knew it bothered me to smell it on his breath.
I would also bet the treatment is brutal in other ways. I can imagine there would be severe stomache-ache at times, even if no other reaction.
1
Our Allergy/Immunologist, Dr. Richard Wasserman has been doing Oral Desensitization for over 10 years. Reading this article pretty much sounds like his protocol method. My daughter who is now 12-years-old started oral desensitization for her severe peanut allergy when she was 5 years old and and then for her severe egg allergy when she was 6 year old. She was anaphylactic to both. I blogged our journey for both the peanut and the egg desensitization journeys. http://mypeanutdesensitization.blogspot.com
http://eggdesensitization.blogspot.com
1
Low dose tolerance has been in place for a long while. Started with those that had extreme allergies to bee stings. Life savor!!!
Peanuts harbor mold. Perhaps a severe allergy to peanuts is really a symptom of mold sensitivity or mold overgrowth in the body. But don’t wait for big pharma to find a cure. There’s no profit in actually getting to root cause of issues. Yeah, whoopee! Person might be able to eat 2 peanuts after treatment, if the side effects don’t get them first. But regardless, the one thing that is certain is that big pharma will make $$$$ on this someway, somehow.
1
If I was in the food biz, I'd build dedicated facilities - or separate processing lines in older facilities - JUST to handle the no-lactose, no-nut allergen-free products.
Costs might be higher and scheduling tougher, but you don't accidentally kill children that way.
Similarly, my soda-pop plant would have a dedicated are JUST to produce the non-caffienated products to take the worry out for the growing mass of people wanting no more caffeine.
Yeah, you're right - I never ran a business! So I don't know just how this would work out in the real world. But I've been in schools where this kid and that were in mortal danger just from ingesting one bit of the next-kid-over's snack.
1
@L'osservatore
The challenge with the "no allergan" method is that the set of banned products differs across individuals yet all need a healthy diet.
My friend's kid with Celiac disease is transferring colleges because at the small college she attends, the "food sensitivity meals" in the cafeteria are just not nutritious after all of the eliminations.
1
@L'osservatore: I hope you someday get a chance! Unfortunately, the public will not tolerate a higher price for a product, even if it is fairly nominal. So you'll have to trim your margins to be able to make a business out of your aspirations.
But I think you could be successful. What I see of American business is that it is over-represented by billionaire owners. If you can live with only achieving millionaire status, you could make it fly... Merci!
Unfortunately, peanuts are not the only food that can cause severe allergic reactions; in fact, one can have food ' intolerances' that won't even show up during allergy testing, but affect a person in the same manner. I have NO allergies, but the list of foods that affect me is very long and I have been careful to avoid them for decades. and yes, I have been to the E>R> a couple of times when a supposedly 'safe' food has caused me to have a reaction, even foods I have ingested in the past with no problem. The problem can be what an animal ate, what preservatives are used,what oils are used to bake,and what other foods are eaten at the same time ( one goes over a threshold ).
2
This "drug" sounds a lot like the peanut desensitization therapy that has been around for about a decade now. The outcomes are certainly just about identical to what I recall was expected of the therapy. The concept is simple enough: feed the patient a very small dose of peanut (or flour) in a controlled environment. If no reaction occurs, increase the dosage next time. If reaction occurs, decrease the dosage next time and then continue until an increased dosage is tolerated. Calling this therapy a "drug" is misleading in the extreme. And of note; there is zero proprietary technology involved in the desensitization therapy, to the best of my knowledge. Just find an allergist who practices the protocol.
7
Amazing how an old treatment and a common, inexpensive product can be hailed as something new. Leave it to America to try to monetize a grocery store product plus some knowledge.
I've bought peanut flour in a jar, $10 for 24 ounces. Since then, I just refill from bulk, even cheaper.
What I have never seen addressed is how did this allergy tragedy develop? Growing up in the 1950's, almost every lunch brought from home had Jif peanut butter, Welch's grape jelly, inside white Wonderbread. Southwest has moved from nutritious peanuts to gag white flour glutenized pretzels. I now bring my own foods.
I don't know anyone with peanut allergies, but I had a friend survive a very scary episode from trace walnuts. Some of the comments are really uncalled for. I feel for those caught in this affliction.
4
This kind of oral desensitization to food allergens has been around for decades.
My father in-law used it successfully in the forties in his family practice to help children cope with food allergies .
The immune system can be trained to tolerate slow gradually increasing food allergens up to a point to avoid the danger of an anaphylactic reaction .
Now Big Pharma wants to make a profit from what was used to be common sense and wisdom of older physicians.
9
@Inter nos It could be done with off-the-shelf peanut flour or peanut butter. For those highly allergic, this product will allow for a very exact dose of peanut protein. With off-the-shelf product, there might be concerns of the protein content of the product. Also, someone would have to be careful to measure out the right amount, but it could be done.
@RTP my father in law ( in 1940 ) empirically used a solution of the substance dispensed by an eye dropper.
A drop a day for many days ( weeks ?) incrementally slowly increasing the drops with good clinical results.
I don’t have more details about this courageous man handling such precious lives.
@RTP: It's not just a hypothetical! It IS being done, in allergists' offices around the country, right now. It's called Private Practice OIT. This (very sloppily-researched) suggests there's something new here, but there isn't. Allergists do this with regular peanut floor; Aimmune is trying to turn it into a patentable product. It's not about safety (the protein content in peanut floor is consistent enough for this to work just fine, and the doctor's office measures it out in mg); it's about profit for a drug company.
1
This is welcome news to those of us whose children are dependent on nuts for a healthy diet.
As much as my family wants to be supportive of families whose children can be seriously harmed by peanuts, for us, the common ban on nuts and ground nuts is a big burden.
There are really very few good substitutes among shelf-stable foods to pack for lunch once you eliminate nuts. My child (now grown), with his own health issues, was fairly dependent on nuts to keep his own blood sugar level and to keep the weight on.
A nut ban at school and camp is not without cost to other families.
5
@Lydia
I would feed my kid cardboard if another of his classmates had a life-threatening allergy to something he liked. Perhaps if you witnessed an eight year old having an anaphylactic reaction you’d have a change of heart about what constitutes a “cost” to your family.
9
@Lenore
At no place in my comment do I state that we fail to follow these rules or respect them.
Unfortunately, the alternatives presented when peanuts are banned are often the equivalent of cardboard (or worse, sugar-filled cardboard).
For kids with other metabolic issues besides allergies, the peanut/nut ban is a medical challenge. To pretend otherwise is naive and not helpful to the debate.
2
@Lydia There are many alternatives to peanut butter. One option is Sun Butter, which is made from sunflower seeds. I've not met a peanut butter lover that did not also love sun butter.
There is also soy butter, that I understand is good, although we have not tried it.
Finally, are you aware that peanut butter often contains aflatoxin, a human carcinogen.
I would suggest you consider expanding your repertoire of foods.
2
My daughter has been participating in a similar treatment for over a year now. Highly allergic to peanuts she started her treatment under the supervision of the New England Food Allergy Treatment Center using a similar protocol as what is described in this article. She is now currently taking a daily maintenance dose of 5 peanut M&Ms with no reaction. Blood work shows her reaction to peanuts has dropped significantly. We understand this is not a cure, but the peace of mind that accidental exposure will not lead to catastrophic results is priceless.
9
With the holiday season coming up, I kindly ask all of you to be mindful and please take the time to label the ingredients on the treats you bake and share, because that simple step truly means life or death for us with allergies. This isn't an annoying diet fad, it's a tragedy waiting to happen.
Food allergies are the worst. It sets you up for a lifetime of food related anxiety. Every first bite I take of any food that I didn't prepare myself goes through the test of taking a small bite and then waiting a minute to see if there is a reaction. Furthermore, with the gluten-free movement, even safe foods like cream cheese now have nut-based alternatives that I previously wouldn't even have checked. Sadly, many of us have gone through terrifying, near-death experiences with our throats swelling and airways closeing while being fully conscious. Furthermore, some people have the opinion that a generation of natural-selection will will rid the world of annoying allergic people like me. For those with food allergies, remember to ALWAYS carry an epinephrine injector, no matter what. The time you don't have one is the time you will need it.
2
@Kitty Why would anyone with such severe food allergies ever eat anything that they didn't prepare themselves? I don't understand why other's food allergies have to be a concern to those who don't have them? My brothers are allergic to cats and don't go into friend's homes who don't have cats. They suggest an alternative location including serving to host. Why must I watch out for your allergies?
@Alistair - I don’t know, maybe to be a decent human being? Sometimes people want to socialize with others. I am fortunate enough to have friends who always let me know what they are serving so that we can bring alternatives along when there is an item that can’t be eaten. I read Kitty’s post as asking for disclosure. Doesn’t seem to be such a huge burden to me.
6
Other's food allergies don't have to be a concern for those who don't have them. It is 100% on the person with the allergy to ask and make sure they know the ingredients before consuming a questionable item.
It is merely a consideration, or act of kindness, just like your brother's friends disclosing that they have cats before your brothers make plans with them. He's not asking to get rid of the cats, he just wants to know.
Another step forward in making the lives of children safer, more normal and their parents less terrified.
No one, that is no one knows how to prevent children from having a peanut allergy. If you think you know you are wrong.
If you ever saw or had to attend or treat a person with anaphylaxis you would never offer the snark remarks that it is not a deadly affliction.
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@Edward Blau
Well put!
2
If I am allergic to something I stay away from it. It's not such a difficult concept.
That said we are grateful for this medication.
1
@MIKEinNYC Actually it is kind of difficult for a 5 year-old at a picnic who's given a sandwich where the bread includes nuts (happened to us) or when a bagel shop gives a 10 year old a bagel with traces of peanuts (happened to us) or when a cookie company creates a peanut butter version of a cookie but keeps the packaging looking the same, (horribly, tragically happened to someone else).
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Way to blame the infant victims, MIKEinNYC.
Take a bow !
12
@MIKEinNYC The concept isn't difficult, but the practice is. I'm highly allergic to garlic and I have to work hard to get restaurants to prepare something without garlic - it's in just about everything that's prepped ahead of time. Same with anything processed you buy at the grocery. And potlucks? Forget it.
4
This is old news. This protocol (Oral Immunotherapy) has been used successfully around the country for years for every type of food allergy. What's new is that big pharma is trying to get their hands on the "protocol" and make large amounts of money off of families by up charging for food that would cost pennies in the grocery store.
My son has a severe peanut allergy and has been working with a board certified allergist and is now eating peanuts every day, thanks to him. And it cost close to nothing ($200) for a year's worth of peanut flour that was carefully measured and divided into capsules that we took over the course of many months to desensitize him to peanuts. I can see where this is going. Big Pharma will come out with their "drug" and families will be paying exorbitant amounts of money for a protocol that doctors developed years ago and have successfully used for years to help their patients because they cared. Not because it made them tons of money.
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@Karen There are many physicians who will not do the treatment with their patients without the rigorous studies and FDA approval of treatments. Not because they want to make money (which they would not from a medication anyway), but because they are concerned about safety as well as efficacy of treatment. There are a lot of ethical concerns with doctors conducting these kinds of treatments with patients when the treatments have not been sufficiently studied. Not to say it can't be done, but many doctors and parents are rightly concerned about making sure it's all safe. My 6 year old daughter was diagnosed with peanut allergy at 18 months and our allergist has told us she will be a good candidate for the treatments once they are FDA-approved.
3
@Michelle You have my sympathies regarding your daughter's allergy. Courage, it can actually become a very manageable problem as your child grows up. We tried the treatment described (intentionally vaguely) here about 6 years ago. If you're sincerely interested, I suggest you try shopping around for clinicians who are working with this. That said, the treatment is not for everyone.
1
@Karen yup! PPOIT maintenance for 2 years for peanuts here, plus milk and egg--no drug even close for those severe, life limiting allergies (or tree nuts) but yes you can do them all in private practice OIT now. I've written to this reporter in the past, but like all the others, she ignores story leads and just takes the pharma press release right from the fax machine and goes to print
2
Words have meaning. "Parants no longer have to worry" is not the same as "parents no longer have to be on guard." You have unintentionally perpetuated the stereotype that we are just worry warts.
4
This is OIT. This is what hundreds of kids have been doing with private practice board certified allergists for years. Because someone created it in pill form, it is now getting FDA approval. This is not new. There are many dedicated allergists who are already helping save these kids lives every day.
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See www.oit101.org for a list of board certified allergists doing OIT now. In maintenance for peanuts, milk and egg here. Life changing for sure.
2
@Jaclyn
Very interesting.
How long does a treatment course take?
It took me 3-5 years to get through a course of allergy shots for inhaled allergens, due to reactions, and I've had four full courses in my 63 years.
Allergies are a strange and pesky condition.
@KathyGail
OIT can be completed in a matter of months, which I found amazing. I have also spent years doing allergy shots. My kids have food allergies An should OIT is planned. I think 6-9 months of active treatments is normal, but some go faster. Maintenance (at home) is “forever” which means maintaining consumption on whatever schedule doctor says
This story as pitched as a life-saving. BUT. The safety and tolerability of the treatment has caused some concern, and shares of Aimmune have been down since February. Epinephrine was used by 52 patients in the AR101 arm, or 14 percent, to counteract allergic reactions to the treatment during the study. However, nearly 94 percent of those epinephrine injections were used to stop mild or moderate allergic reactions, according to the NEJM paper. That's quite high!
"Desensitization was not easy on patients," wrote Michael Perkin, a pediatric allergy expert at St. George’s University of London, in the review of Aimmune’s clinical trial published in NEJM.
1
@Lincoln’s Sparrow And they are calling it "OIT" when they have convoluted the protocols the private allergists have spent over a decade perfecting. They put hundreds of children on a template protocol. Of course they cannot all do well. They need individualized treatment with real food. That's what they will be served at restaurants and school and out in the world. Researchers said they don't know if all proteins are there or not - which was their entire point of making a pharmaceutical version. They've linked asthma drugs, probiotics, and who knows what else to "OIT" saying it works now when most of the accessory drugs are not needed and OIT has worked for ages.
Once it’s ready marketing, big pharma will add a few zeroes to the production cost, and our politicians will act like there’s nothing they can do.
6
The article title is misleading, this is not about a drug that the government is approving it is about a continued study getting better but not ideal results, a study that is expensive, challenging for patient and parents, and potentially dangerous. Of course it is better news than no news. Interesting product placement in two of the images in the article. Is this study or article partially funded by American peanut producers, why photos of commercial peanut butter? Just curious. I wish there were a way to make this reaction non-life threatening for all who suffer. As the boy in the study expressed, food as a weapon is a hard way to grow up. Thank you to the scientists who continue to work on this and thank you to the families making a big sacrifice to participate in such studies.
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@Babs Wheelden Yes. The American Peanut Association, along with FARE, funds these studies. And if the APA would think about it, they could sell way more actual peanut products if people could desensitize and use those products as their doses. Like Private Practice OIT families do. We pop off Rolo tops and place our doses inside. We mix nuts and seeds with melted chocolate. We mix eggs with cheese for doses. And so on. We use REAL FOOD because that's what's out there in the REAL world. But here's the thing, no one gets rich. The allergists do their jobs and get 18 million more patients. With no end in sight because they don't know what's causing it. And people just eat naturally. Families of food allergic children go back to restaurants and ball games and school and society. And it's just the way nature intended for most. We cut pharma out but we didn't need them in the first place. Not for this.
2
Haven't suffered from ragweed allergy ever since I rubbed and sniffed a strong dose of ragweed pollen. Must have desensitized me in one shot.
1
As a mother to two children with severe peanut allergies, I am deeply disappointed with the blame and lack of support expressed towards peanut allergy families in many of these comments. Let’s move past the victim and family blaming and instead try a little empathy and compassion.
Both of my kids were exclusively breastfeed. Per my physicians recommendations, I ate peanuts while pregnant and nursing. We exposed our children to peanuts orally as soon as their pediatricians recommended it. My home is clean, but not sterile. And guess what. Both of my kids are still allergic to peanuts. And it’s stinks. And it’s scary. And it’s isolating and stressful. And I would never in a million years choose to live a life where so much precaution is needed just because we are “over sensitive”. My spouse and I have allergies and asthma. And our genetic combination created allergic children. Not something I consciously did or didn’t do.
If you judge families for being too precautious, or for doing something to cause this, than you really don’t understand how food allergies work. You likely haven’t witnessed someone suffering from anaphylaxis. I have. My babies at 6 and 10 months. It’s absolutely terrifying.
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@Maggie Thank you Maggie. We're in the same boat, stay strong! Fortunately your comment was the first one I read and it will also be the last one. It's sad how many people these days have nothing better to do with their lives than to inject their negative attitudes into the world, especially online. The best cure for that is not to read comments, ever, and leave the trolls to fester among themselves.
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@RM & @Maggie Thank you both! Yes, stay strong! Don't let people's ignorant negative comments get to you. Truly, they have no idea what we feel like!!!
My 11-year-old has allergies to all legumes, that includes peanuts since it's a legume. And she is also allergic to almonds but not other nuts. She was breastfed, grew up with a pet, not sterile but clean home, she must have ingested dirt all in three continents (she loved playing in the dirt) and was introduced to legumes at an early age.
Recently, she completed OIT for soy (since soy is in EVERYTHING), it took about a year to complete, she has to have some sort of soy product everyday now to make sure her tolerance level stays the same.
Our life is significantly less scary since she is able to tolerate soy, we plan to tackle peanuts next. We are hoping it will work, her IGE level for peanuts is 100+.
1
I wonder- will it be affordable? Or will the manufacturer take advantage and exploit these patients as in what happened with epi pens?
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@Amanda Kennedy 5-10k for the first 6 months then 400 a month for life after... http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/02/aimmune-announces-promising-peanut-allergy-treatment.html
@Amanda Kennedy: Look for an allergist who provides OIT in Private Practice instead! No need to pay thousands. We dose with regular old peanuts: cost is about $1.50 a month. Find a list of allergists who offer this treatment right now at OIT101.org.
@liseetsa This is not a new treatment, whatever anyone says. Allergists have been doing it for years. Once you get through the first few hundred milligrams, you graduate to eating good old-fashioned peanuts. A favorite is peanut M & Ms. So you're not locked in to big pharma at all at the moment, and certainly not for life.
So what would have happened to these kids if their mothers had eaten peanuts while they were gestating? Such a situation must have occurred.
@stan continople, I ate peanut butter when I was pregnant with my peanut allergic son. My other pregnancy with twins, I did not eat any peanut products and they are both allergy free. I am not disputing tournament logic, but that did not make a difference with my kids.
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As I’m sure many have responded, I did all the things you’re supposed to do to avoid peanut allergies — are peanut butter almost every day when I was pregnant, exposed my son at he earliest possibly age, gave him a healthy exposure to usual germs (ie, wasn’t “hyper clean” or neurotic about germs), and he still is allergic to peanuts. He also has asthma, which makes him the most vulnerable of even the allergic population. It’s not easy to worry every day that an accidental exposure will kill him (he’s six), but I try to be pragmatic and not overly cautious. I want him to grow up as “normal” as he can. I didn’t cause his allergy. But I live with the fear every day
@stan continople
Our daughter ate plenty of peanuts and peanut butter while pregnant with her child, who has a very severe peanut allergy.
My kid had a close call recently, and an ER visit, thanks to an accident with our friend the peanut.
Sign us up!
4
When I often flew commercially 30 years ago, I didn't notice people dying on those peanut laden flights.
Is this like the people who are suddenly allergic to smoke?
@Paulie
People aren't "allergic" to smoke. Cigarette smoke contains numerous toxins that are extremely harmful to humans. Lung cancer doesn't happen unless you're a smoker (or work in a coal mine). Strokes are primarily a result of smoking (or of obesity/diabetes). Cigarette smoking results in over $300 billion in avoidable healthcare costs every year in the U.S., while cigarette taxes only bring in $25-30 billion in revenue.
Why exactly does everyone need to subsidize the massive health costs of smoking?
1
@Runner1
"...Lung cancer doesn't happen unless you're a smoker (or work in a coal mine)..."
Hogwash. Plenty of non smokers who do not work in coal mines (black lung is more prominent there, anyway) have lung cancer. High blood pressure is the primary cause of strokes, not obesity and diabetes. People aren't "suddenly allergic" to cigarette smoke, some have been truly allergic but no one paid any attention because it was assumed that there was nothing wrong with cigarette smoke at first, then the manufacturers and government were more interested in hiding the effects of smoking. We subsidize the massive health cost of smoking because we subsidize the massive health cost of alcohol consumption and any other legal, yet harmful practice.
@Paulie
I have been allergic to peanuts since I was a little kid. I am now 67 years old. I have flown on those airlines 40 years ago when they gave out little bags of peanuts to all the passengers. I didn't open my bag of nuts or even touch it. I said no thank you to the stewardess. I am not allergic to the smell. But I admit, the smell of all those peanuts in the cabin was most unpleasant for me. But, no, it didn't kill me. I was, however, very careful eating any food the stewardesses touched, like fresh rolls, in case they had eaten of the peanuts themselves.
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I have hope that this procedure will work, so that people with peanut allergies can now be around the food staple without fear.
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@Ken It's already working. It's called oral immunotherapy and many allergists are instituting the protocol, and have been for several years.
Folks are wiping down tables because they're afraid of peanut dust? Yet "peanut anaphylaxis "deaths are rare, and the precise number is not known."
How American - billions of dollars for a treatment against fear.
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@Robert Pierce It depends on the person. My son has a 2 minute window to full blown anaphylaxis. I'd wipe down the world to keep him alive. Thankfully one of the researchers came out of the study and treated him 8 years ago with actual food so he hasn't had a reaction since 2 weeks before treatment--thank goodness he had excellent physician care. Statistics blame reactions on complications of asthma. Sure-- asthma with a food allergy. If it's your child, and you witness them no longer breathing and turning blue in your arms, no one else matters. You have to find a way for them to live in the world. But the real story here is how researchers have allowed this situation to escalate for a decade when they knew actual food desensitization would help almost everyone. The food is the medicine here. But we need the allergists to oversee it because it's too dangerous to DIY. They are capable and qualified and willing. That's their job. But the researchers have some of them so confused and the medical schools aren't even teaching desensitization. Our doctors teach each other because they must--if they want to help people. There's your amazing story!
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@Robert Pierce - these deaths do occur, but they are rare because of good labeling, and mostly, the vigilance of parents and kids with allergies (when they get old enough). That doesn’t mean it’s not an issue.
@Robert PierceMy 10-year old daughter had a reaction when a person opened a bag of trail mix that contained peanuts in a school auditorium. The "dust" that apparently escaped into the air was enough to cause my daughter to break out in hives, have trouble breathing and cause a general panic throughout the theater as teachers scrambled to find an epipen and classmates watched my daughter struggle to breathe. "Billions of dollars" are not being spent! However, the monies that are being invested in understanding and treating this allergy, are to save lives and improve the quality of life for those who wage a daily battle against a ubiquitous substance. Obviously this writer has no idea what it is like for a family to live in constant fear that a casual encounter with "dust" can end the life of a cherished child.
I consider peanut butter to be a miracle food in terms of its nutritional value and where peanuts can be grown. Peanut butter is used in Africa to treat famine victims.
My mother gave her children peanut butter and banana sandwiches with whole grain bread as a convenient staple food. We never had mac n cheese.
Maybe toddlers react differently to peanut butter when it is accompanied by bread and fruit, or tomato soup, but have allergic reactions if they get it in candy without the other stuff to buffer it.
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@Kay my son’s first reaction and first and only exposure to peanut butter was with it on a banana. It is the protein in the food that is allergenic. I don’t think it is physically possible for a food protein to change by eating other foods along with it. High heat can change a protein, yes, but bread vs. candy, no.
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@Kay
If one is allergic to peanuts, you are allergic to peanut butter too regardless of whether it comes between bread or in candy. My brother grew up on peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches. I dared not eat the jelly because of the trace amounts of peanut butter found in it from his peanut butter covered knife. And to this day I can not eat grape jelly because of all the times I got sick from eating it when I ran into the peanut butter in it. But I admit that is psychological.
@Kay Take a look at the concentrations of aflatoxin, a human carcinogen, in peanut butter, and then tell me it's a miracle food.
The main ingredient in this drug is peanut flour? This sounds like exactly the kind of thing people are going to try at home, as inadvisable as that may be.
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@V. Vazquez That could be a deadly mistake. It's too dangerous to DIY. You must be under the supervision of a board certified allergist. So many things could go wrong as you can imagine.
My son, now 15, participated in oral desensitization on an experimental basis in Germany. It did take a lot of discipline, but it worked. And yes, it is a huge relief to know that we don't have to worry about accidental peanut consumption.
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One of the reasons we have more severe allergies now is, no doubt, that in earlier times and in developing countries young children with severe allergies die.
In many places in the U.S. if a kid goes into anaphylactic shock, we have epipens, ambulances, and hospitals that will keep that child alive. In 1914 or in current Bangladesh kids ate everything available--and allergic kids died young and undiagnosed.
Over-sanitization, pesticides, etc. may have increased the incidence, but there really is no way to know.
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@JO Add to the list of possible causes: Caesarian sections, antibiotics, bottle feeding
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@Unconvinced So, you'd rather the mother and child died from days of unproductive labor and eschew Caesarian sections? Or soldiers die of gangrene without antibiotics? And what of the babies who can't breast feed for a myriad of reasons? The world would be a better place without these things?
I was raised on peanut butter. As a child my mother fed me peanut butter and banana sandwiches almost every day. As an adult, I still love peanut butter and eat it on toast several times a week. And I don't remember hearing about anyone else having peanut allergies until decades later. How do these kids end up allergic to peanut butter to begin with?
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@Kay over sanitized homes and low rates of breastfeeding are two things thought to be responsible.
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@V. Vazquez. My mother wasn't breast feeding and she kept the house clean. I did play outside though.
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Welp...I was raised like you. My mom even put peanut butter in Rice Krispie treats growing up. Fast forward to age 36. Anaphylactic to peanuts, tree nuts and shell fish.
Food allergies can occur any time. These aren't hysteria reactions, intolerances or a diagnosis by doctor with dubious credentials.
The immunue system is a weird beast. Who knew at age 40, I'd be schlepping around over priced Epi-pens and Clorox wipes to wipe down stuff.
My allergist said he is sees many more adults with new food allergies every year. I used to eat shrimp, peanuts and nuts. Grew up around pets. Don't clean like I work in a clean lab.
I do have the allergic triad of asthma, eczema and environmental allergies. Pretty sure that primed the food allergy pump. Two of my siblings developed anaphylaxis to nuts and soy later in life too. We rolled snake eyes on that part of our genetics.
So don't be too smug crunching your peanut brittle, and and rolling your eyes at all the snowflakes. All it takes is your immune system to defect (at any age or time), and you'll be reading tiny print to see if your favorite treat has the dreaded words "may contain..."
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Not sure why this articles calls this program a “drug.” It is not a drug, it is a treatment process where patients are dosed with increasing amounts of defatted peanut flour (hardly a drug).
My children are going through it now, and it is no walk in the park, They see their allergist every two weeks for a dose escalation. They started at much lower levels than the article indicates for the trial, 0.8 mg rather than the 3 mg cited for this particular study. They have reactions at almost every escalation, itchy mouth and throat, GI distress, nausea. If they can tolerate that dose with symptoms subsiding within about a half an hour, they dose at that level daily for two weeks, and then escalate again.
Insurance doesn’t pay for it (thanks Aetna) because it’s “experimental.” In regard to cost, we’re talking a $250/mo for each kid ($500/mo total). They’ve both had setbacks, where each has ended up in the ER.
That said, if you can make the time & financial commitment (a 2 hr doctor appointment every two weeks for a minimum of 6 months), it’s totally worth it. We are getting to the dose level where a “processed in a plant that also process tree nuts & peanuts” is not as scary as it once was.
But, once again, this isn’t a drug you take to make the allergy go away. It’s a treatment with gradually increasing levels of peanut flour (& other nuts in my childrens’ case) which reduces sensitivity to a point where they don’t need to live in constant fear of anaphylaxis.
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"The treatment was not effective in the small number of adults enrolled in the study."
I wonder why. Thoughts?
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Guessing the adult immune system is less flexible to change/learning. That fact is a huge bummer for me, because my allergy to peanuts started at age 36, not three.
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@Ford313 I was surprised by that result as well. Have definitely heard of adult successes in OIT in private practice. Don't give up hope--that figure may even be due to drop outs due to lack of compliance; it's a lot of long doctor's visits which is harder for a working adult, for sure
1
Now we need someone to work on a method to induce tolerance to other allergens besides peanuts. My young adult son anaphylaxes to kiwi, and has since he had his first exposure at age 2 years. It would be nice for him to be able to forget his EpiPens and not panic.
We view his allergy as lucky because kiwi is not as ubiquitous as peanuts. Yet, he never eats fruit salad or a fresh fruit tart outside of our home because even the residual juice of the cut kiwi causes him to have an anaphylatic reaction. And he never knows if kiwi was cut with the rest of the fruit.
Severe allergic reactions are terrifying to the person who experiences them and to their family members and friends. It really would alleviate the fear of reacting to have a great method for inducing the kind of tolerance for any food allergy that these peanut-allergic patients now have for two peanut M&Ms a day.
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@JulieN--I think this research into peanut allergies will have the effect of creating ways of handling other allergies as well. This concept has worked anecdotally before and now that a good study has shown that it can work for many other people the concept will no doubt be tried on other allergens as well.
It might be a while, though, before kiwis are included. My friend has one grandchild who may benefit from this regimen, but another who probably won't--she developed anaphylaxis from eating "ants on a log." They assumed that it was the peanut butter, like her cousin, but through testing found out that it was celery!
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@Susan I developed a severe celery allergy as an adult. In many ways it is a more difficult allergy to control because celery is in everything. Including tuna in water, organic lunch meats, sauces, etc. and in the US not only is celery not listed as an allergen than can cause anaphylaxis but it doesn’t even have to be listed as an ingredient and can be labeled only as a spice. In the European Union celery must not only be listed as an ingredient but be in bold like peanut or soy would be here. There is a Facebook group called “People for the Awareness of Celery Allergy” that your friend might find useful.
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@JulieN: Doctors providing this treatment in private practice do it for lots of allergens-- not just peanut. I know families who have had their child desensitized to tree nuts, eggs, milk and flour (I haven't heard about kiwi, but it may be out there). Talk to an allergist who offers OIT!
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I think this is potentially a game changer. This could help out a lot of families with this situation. I'd love to read the study and find out if tolerance could increase, to say eating a Snickers bar or maybe a PBJ?
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@GIS yes it can but you have to continue the therapy, switching over to peanuts. We did our whole therapy with an allergist using peanut flour and my son passed a 24 peanut challenge and is considered cleared for 'free eating.'
I've been reading about solutions to the peanut allergy problem for at least three decades. Treatments for patients, treatment for the peanuts, genetic treatments for the plant. All very promising before they didn't work (I guess, because we're still solving the problem).
I just hope we're learning something about the immune systems in all this.
3
Many references to the study/treatment applying to "children" but then the article mentions that those with peanut allergy don't outgrow it, and not all the study population was children. So why not just say "people" with peanut allergies? Is the issue different for allergic children and allergic adults?
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@Joe It didn't work on adults adults so they just sort of forgot them. Treatments don't get approved by dwelling on their failures. I'm well into middle age and lucky to be alive. No other kids had peanut allergies. No other other young adults I know had peanut allergies. I was just sort of forgotten about. It wasn't until a whole bunch of kids started having peanut allergies anyone even bothered to look into it. So all I can say is you survived to adulthood like me so that's one different than kis.
I was told that if you peanut blood level is over a certain number than you wouldn’t be considered a candidate for this type of drug/immunotherapy. Does anyone know? My daughter for example maxes out over 100 on her peanut blood level which again was told to be too have to be a candidate. I hope that is not the case but trying to find clear answers. If there is anyone that can shed some light on what the detailed qualifications are to be able to take this drug that would be helpful. Thank you!
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@As There is no such thing as a peanut blood level. The measurement used is a blood test called a RAST, which measures the amount of antibody against the peanut protein is in the blood. RAST values are different depending on the units used to describe the results.
But in any case, your understanding of your daughter’s allergy is incomplete. You should find yourself a good allergist, who will explain the values and let you know just where your daughter falls on the continuum.
But, in the end, that number doesn’t mean much. You can have a low RAST and still have anaphylaxis, or a high RAST with no anaphylaxis.
Talk with you allergist and if he/she doesn’t give you a good explanation, find another one.
@As having an extremely high RAST number should not disqualify you from doing OIT, but it's going to depend on which doctor you're seeing. For instance, Mt. Sinai has been quietly doing private practice OIT for a year or so now, but they've been cherry picking their patients to be very low risk--so they'd probably tell you no. A more experienced OIT allergist would more likely tell you she'd be the perfect candidate b/c of extreme sensitivity (IF she's extremely sensitive b/c as the other commenter added, high RAST doesn't always necessarily translate to extreme sensitivity. I've been told it correlatees more accurately to 'whether or not you'd have a reaction if you ingested this food,' but not how severe the reaction would be)
My son went through oral immunotherapy a.k.a. OIT under guidance of a specialized doctor who was part of the initial research. Yes, he now takes the same allergen that almost killed him. He intially took gradual dosage from 1/50,000th of a gram and worked his way up 4 grams of peanuts daily for daily maintenance. Doctor's supervision is key. Each patient is different. Some can reach maintenance in a few months while others have to take more than a year.
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I have had nut/peanut (among other) food allergies since I can remember. No one knew what this was back in the late 80's. Even though I had a nut allergy, I still ate Kit Kat, Twix or Three Musketeers...This was before the 'may contain' warnings appeared that are so prevalent these days.
Anyway, I remember the first Halloween when those warnings started appearing. Early/mid 90's or so. My mom freaked out a bit and called the candy companies. I do not think they gave her much of an explanation. I still ate the candy with 'may contain' warnings. We figured nothing really changed from last year to this.
I'd say 99.9% of packaged goods that have those warnings have no effect on me. Those that do, have not been anywhere near life threatening yet. It is very apparent very fast when there is something I should no longer continue to eat.
Maybe I am lucky, or maybe I have been partially desensitized all these years.
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@Jeffrey You are probably not as sensitive as the most allergic but you are also lucky. I ate Cheese-Its for years then got seriously ill because the product is now notorious for cross contamination ever since they came out with a peanut butter cracker. Ritz is bad too. Chocolate M&Ms are very commonly cross contaminated from the the peanut ones. You need to be aware that many Asian restaurants use cold processed peanut oil. That's deadly. If you don't want to experiment I'd probably join some of the social media groups of peanut allergy sufferers and there are websites with this kind of info as well.
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@Jeffrey those warnings are innoculations...for the producer.
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I read about oral tolerance studies several years ago, and these results seem to have delivered on its promise! Very happy this will be available to children facing food allergies (peanut, but possibly others in the future).
I see a lot of speculation in the comments about the causes of the increase in food allergy. When I had my children a few years ago, I researched food allergy like nobody's business and made a plan to avoid it (and neither has any allergies):
1. Breastfeed if possible. This is the evolutionary standard for infant nutrition. Mix breast milk with possibly allergenic foods on first introduction.
2. Premasticate your baby's food sometimes. Yeah, sounds gross, doesn't it? But until the industrial revolution EVERYONE premasticated baby food! Adult saliva has bacteria and enzymes that help train babies' immune systems.
3. Introduce possible allergens early and often! Avoiding allergens increases the risk of allergy.
4. Absolutely no peanut oils or other allergenic oils for topical use for baby!
It's no wonder that Americans have seen an explosion of food allergies as "experts" told us to feed babies formula, use jarred baby food or a sterilized food processor to feed infants, and to avoid all allergens during the very time period babies SHOULD be exposed via the oral route, and push baby skin care products that introduce allergens via a topical route (that predisposes for allergy development!).
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Your recommendations don’t work for all kids.
My son was diagnosed with his first food allergy at 4 months when he only was exclusively breastfeeding. He had horrible eczema. He never had ate any food, nor used any creams with food. Even though we introduced other real foods starting at 6 months and he was breastfed until he was a toddler, he developed new allergies every few months. And our house is a mess and we have a dog.
At this time at age 5, my son no longer has any food allergies. We went through sublingual immunotherapy in Wisconsin and saw a Chinese medicine physician who works for Mt. Sinai in New York. None of his physicians nor I know why he developed food allergies, but we all are ecstatic he no longer has them.
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@Elizabeth Aires--It's also good to have fur-bearing animals in the house. I recommend "An Epidemic of Absence" to understand why allergies, asthma, and autoimmune disease is so prevalent in the developed world these days.
2
@Elizabeth Aires Your comment about topical products is very interesting. I have an equivalent allergy to flax, unknown until adult anaphylaxis. As a toddler I was exposed to linseed oil, used as a preservative for wood in desert areas. I was unaware flax was the same as linseed or I would have avoided it. I am still allergic to every plant I was exposed to as a small child. I gave myself allergy shots starting age 8 until teen years. I guess they helped, hard to say. Topical exposure matters.
My kids were all breastfed, ate everything else, pre-masticated as required. My son has severe mold allergies, but grew up in a dry area.
My daughter developed chronic hives in college. Origin of the hives is still elusive, stress? not enough stress? a combination of allergens? Very debilitating for her and she has no adequate treatment now.
I think that breastfeeding, for a long time and exposure to our farm animals and pets was very helpful in reducing their subsequent allergies. Empirical evidence suggests that childhood traumas also appear to exacerbate development of severe allergies.
1
I read the article, and have more serious questions than answers.
1. The first and second paragraphs say, with excitement, that a youngster who received the new treatment then "gorged" on candy that "may" have had traces of peanut in it. But did it contain any traces of peanuts? We're not told.
Then in the next paragraph, we are told that the aim is only to help youngsters who have "accidental exposure" to peanuts.
Is the "gorged" writing a bit hyped?
2. The first thing I look for in this type of article is the academic affiliation of the lead clinicians who did the study, and what they say. I find only reference to the drug company that will sell the treatment.
3. The article makes passing mention that some folks are concerned about "how (the treatment) will be priced," without offering estimates. Surely, the doctors involved have an estimate of the cost for patients who will be treated over a six-month period. Total cost (the drug and doctor visits to administer it) is important to any new-treatment
article. I would say a must.
4. Finally, as this long article nears its end, we read that another company already is seeking approval for a similar treatment. Maybe it will be less expensive, or work better. We aren't told what experts say.
2.
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@Lewis Cope
to answer question #1 -- people with severe food allergies are required to avoid any packaged food products that could be cross contaminated during manufacturing. The chocolate bars mentioned are produced on equipment that also manufactures chocolate bars with peanuts in them. Previous to the treatment, the patient's allergy was so severe that a minute amount of peanut in a cross contaminated product would trigger a reaction. Whether or not the bars had contamination from peanuts is not the issue. The difference is that the patient is no longer likely to be hospitalized due to a trace exposure, and can consume products that have a small risk, without fear of dying.
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@Lewis Cope
Answer to 2 may be found in the New England Journal of Medicine. The University concerned was Univ of Washington in Seattle building on University of Cambridge work. There is an article in The Guardian. Like others I am frustrated that there is no mention of adult desensitisation. I assume it does not work. If not, why not?
@Lewis Cope the other drug in the pipeline, DBV's patch, is totally different. It goes through the skin, so it's much less risky (pretty much no chance of a severe reaction) but it's also been much less efficacious
Is there any reason the exact same result couldn't be accomplished using tiny amounts of actual peanut rather than a PHARMA concoction?
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Yes, M Miller.
The PhRMA-Congressional-Industrial mafia would never stand for that kind of affordable common sense for the American people.
Greed Over People 2018
8
Yes. The minute dose of peanut protein (mcg to mg to start) must be controlled and ramped slowly. Clinic supervision is required as the adverse effects can be dire. This is no different from those receiving allergy shots under medical supervision.
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@M Miller I like a big pharma conspiracy as much as the next guy/gal, but defatted peanut flour isn’t it. No one is getting rich making this stuff. It is better to use the processed nut flour early on, so that the dose can be relied upon as accurate. Later on, patients can graduate to old fashioned tree nuts or peanuts.
7
Here's a crazy idea...stop using peanut oil in infant vaccines.
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I don't know whether there is peanut oil in vaccines but there is evidence, at least anecdotal, that exposure to peanuts at a young age reduces the incidence of peanut allergies. In Israel, there is a very popular peanut snack that kids eat from a very young age and there are almost no peanut allergies.
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@Josh
Some vaccines do include peanut oil. It's very different ingesting peanuts at a young age and having peanut oil injected into your infant body where it will be seen as an invader and lead to the formation of antigens. Our bodies are not actually made to receive injections, that is a totally human invention, while our bodies ARE made to eat things.
@Baruch I don't know why my last comment to you was not included. Peanut oil is not used in infant vaccines.
Per Snopes:
Among the many epidemiological trends blamed on vaccines, one of the lesser known fallacies is that they are the cause of an increased incidence of childhood peanut allergies in the United States and other nations. Alternative health website and “alien false flag” watchdog Natural News, for example, used this argument in a 13 February 2017 story arguing that President Trump’s allegedly exemplary health is, in part, thanks to his never having received a flu shot:
Have you ever wondered why hundreds of thousands of U.S. children are allergic to peanuts? A hundred years ago, peanut allergies were unheard of, yet today, as many as 2 million U.S. children are allergic to them. What changed? The flu shot.
Though articles and individuals attempting to make this link propose a variety of mechanisms for the ways in which an inoculation could contribute to the development of peanut allergies, each relies on the false premise that vaccines (childhood and/or influenza) contain undisclosed traces of peanut oil.
The most common narrative found online is that peanut oil is used as what is known as an adjuvant (a chemical that increases the body’s immune response to an inoculation) but loopholes in the legal system allow this information to remain undisclosed.
My wife knew a lawyer who ate a peanut while her doctor father was nearby and she died.
1
Condolences.
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@Anon
what was the cause of death, could it have been aspiration?
The development is a peanut allergy drug is great news! How long before this drug is part of every passenger aircraft’s first aid kit so that peanuts can once again safely be served as a snack? Pretzels just don’t do it for me.
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@Jay Orchard The drug does not counter exposure - it does allow children to build up a degree of immunity. As the grandfather of a boy with life-threatening allergies, it is exasperating to have people complain about missing peanuts on a flight when my family must be prepared to deliver an Epipen injection followed by emergency landing and trip to the hospital so you can enjoy your nuts. He has been in the ER a dozen times in his 14 years - all due to an unknown source of allergen. He is part of the study and has built an immunity - but there are many like him who have not yet had a chance to do so. So how about doing without peanuts just a little longer while the treatment gets to ALL of the kids will this allergy.
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Well put. I’m very sorry for what your grandson has been through. Delta discontinued serving peanuts for about a year but decided to bring them back after receiving too many complaints by first class customers. The absurdity of this is beyond my comprehension.
My 5 year-old daughter has a peanut allergy and I live with the fear of accidental peanut exposure daily, even while I do everything in my power to keep her safe. The news of these two drugs on the horizon brings tears of relief to my eyes. Fingers crossed they will be available soon.
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I gotta say: I have no nut allergies in my family. I love nuts. I’m the parent of elementary schoolers who fortunately eat everything as long as it’s junk. But these nut allergies are no joke. Some of these kids, despite their and their families best efforts, will go on to *die* from them. (I think the last number I saw was1 in 2000 people with a severe nut or peanut allergy?) Young, lovely, otherwise perfectly healthy person, has to ask about everything they put in their mouth, must tolerate the idea that strangers or friends will perceive that as “annoying,” must be reasonably accessible to a hospital and ambulance, must have an expensive and actually-not-expired epipen on them all the time, and must try to grow up without tacking on an anxiety or eating disorder.
I can eat pretzels for a 4 hour plane flight. And I can even cope with nut-free school! How do you parent with no PB&J? It’s no big deal when you realize actually the alternative is *death* for little Janey.
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Unfortunate kids. it's socially crippling for them and, in college, their friends.
I feel lucky that my kids were hardy and played in the dirt and could eat a huge variety of things, including peanut butter. But one had a college roommate whose allergies prevented our kid from eating or even storing nut-based healthful snacks or trail mix in their dorm room for fear of an attack.
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@desert ratz Your kids weren’t hardy because they played in the dirt - you were just lucky. Believe me, my kids were exposed to as much dirt and germs as any kids, yet one has life-threatening nut allergies. But it is in no way “socially crippling”. Unless you consider being prevented from eating nuts in your dorm room to be socially crippling. What a hardship.
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@Julie
Actually, not eating nuts in his dorm room would be a problem for my kid, due to his own health issues.
But there are ways around this through room mate matching and some sensitivity by the school.
It goes without saying that all college kids should be safe and healthy in their dorm rooms.
(I do wish they would ban comfort animals, though. College students are too messy... but I digress.)
I wish the article included some information on the cost of the “peanut-derived investigational biologic oral immunotherapy drug.” It would be sad (but not surprising) if the cost of “defatted peanut flour” put it out of reach of anyone who needed it.
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@Andrew The cost of the defatted nut flour is infinitesimal compared to the cost of the multiple dr appointments prior to the start of oral immunotherapy, the blood testing, and then the every two week appointment dose escalation (which is not covered by insurance - again, thanks Aetna in our case) for a minimum of six months. Each appointment costs us, out of pocket, several hundred dollars for our two children who are receiving this treatment.
Why NYT decided to tout this as a “drug” to cure nut allergies rather than a long, involved treatment (which is what it is) is inexplicable to me. It seems to be a result of a poor understanding of the condition and the treatment.
The defatted peanut flour is used in the early stages so that the dose is reliable and consists of maintly peanut proteins, which are the allergens. Then the patient graduates to old fashioned nuts. As I said in a previous comment, the peanut flour cost is almost incidental in this treatment. The cost is all the doctors and nurses and multiple appointments for months on end.
@Andrew 5-10k for the first 6 months then 400 a month for life after... http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/02/aimmune-announces-promising-peanut-allergy-treatment.html
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Israel has an extremely low instance of peanut allergy among children born there. Why? Because peanut products are common, with one particular ubiquitous peanut-based snack that children begin to eat at as young as 3 months old.
In the US, there are people who keep their children away from all peanut products even when there is no indication of allergy. The implication being that avoidance of peanuts contributes to the very thing they're afraid of, although there are those people who will be allergic no matter what.
I've noticed an increased amount of parents having their children on a gluten-free diet even when there is no reaction or celiac disease present. Why? They have some notion that it's healthier, when in fact, gluten-free products often have tons of unhealthy ingredients. The same for dairy products. Parents believe almond and soy milks should be healthier, when in fact they all have added sugar and other ingredients, such as the mysterious "natural flavors".
The idea that withholding certain foods, or using substitutes, is healthy in the absence of allergies or intolerance, hasn't been proven, and may, in fact, be worse.
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@Tenkan You are apparently unaware that the levels of allergic reactions vary on an exponential scale. There are some who will die on the first exposure - so your idea about conditioning may work by eliminating those with the highest level reaction at a very early age, but I would not consider this a viable solution.
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These are your opinions. I have 3 children. They were raised the same and only 1 is allergic to peanuts. It’s stressful enough to deal with this allergy...not sure why we need to also blame parents for somehow causing the allergy etc etc. There is no consensus on why rates of peanut allergy have risen so dramatically, and idle speculation is distracting and dangerous. I’m happy to see that this drug is now closer to being approved.
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@Llama We were told to avoid peanuts after my son reacted to eggs. At age 4, he could eat everything except the peanuts-- which he became deadly allergic. Had we introduced them in the drs office (safer) he probably would not have become allergic.
Now they say "early introduction." Which is the natural way and probably best but with a dr in case something goes wrong.
Why do kids eat peanut sauce all over Asia and love it. Barbequed chicken with cooked Sate (peanut) Sauce is the delicacy to serve at kids birthday parties all over Indonesia. Perhaps letting kids eat this at an early age is the solution. Maybe the boiling first with some other ingredients kills the "bugs."
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@rudolf--Kids in developing countries have more parasites and are exposed to more bacterial agents and thus have better-developed immune systems. Their incidence of allergy, asthma, and autoimmune disease is much lower than in developed nations.
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Peanut allergies seem to run in my husband’s Filipino family. I don’t think ethnicity is a factor.
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Beware: peanuts have more pesticides than any other food. That includes peanut butter. My son had eaten plenty of peanut butter until age 13. He suddenly had a severe & anaphylactic reaction to peanut butter, walnuts, kiwi and ALL other fruits except bananas.
He is 30 yrs led today, and those allergies remain. The immunologists believe that pesticides have plenty to do with the sudden allergic onset. In addition, peanuts are notorious for growing molds.
Perhaps parents & the medical community's can review the negative influences of pesticides for the allergic population.
Best of luck to all the brave peanut patients & their parents. And, thank you for taking part in a very important study.
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It’s not clear how much insurance companies will charge for this new allergen drug but you can be sure it won’t be peanuts.
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Jay Orchard...you're in luck; the Borscht Belt is hiring !
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@Socrates
Thanks for the tip but I’m allergic to borscht.
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You're hired, Jay Orchard !
5
While the science is encouraging as Aimmune Therapeutics hits the American pharmaceutical extortion jackpot with this drug, we once again need to look outside our own clueless country for a better solution to our peanut allergy epidemic.
Look at Israel.
There are very low rates of peanut allergy in Israeli children as a result of high levels of peanut consumption from an early age.
The early introduction of peanuts significantly decreased the frequency of the development of peanut allergy among children at high risk for this allergy and modulated immune responses to peanuts.
Researchers found that exposing infants to peanuts within their first year helped prevent peanut allergy by as much as 81%.
The study “clearly indicates that the early introduction of peanut dramatically decreases the risk of development of peanut allergy,” wrote doctors Rebecca Gruchalla of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Hugh Sampson of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Bamba is the number-one selling snack in Israel, with 90% of Israeli families buying it on a regular basis.
Bamba contains 50% peanuts and it's fed to babies and children at early ages.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1414850?query=featured_home#t=article
https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/is-bamba-key-to-peanut-allergy-prevention-1.5311250
Clueless America needs to get a clue.
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@Socrates You're way off base. These allergies are present in children before they even start eating solid foods. That was the case with my son.
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@Socrates
Unfortunately, my son aas born during the window when allergists insisted we avoid feeding our son peanuts because hebjad a milk allergy as an infant.
Fortunately, this treatment is available from allergists WITHOUT this specific drug. My son is now up to four regulalry priced roasted peanuts per day.
Let’s hope the approach using a compounding pharmacy at first, and plain old peanuts later, is not driven to extinction by Big Pharma.
And feed babies peanuts!
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Andrew...you're way over-reactive.
I also have a son with a peanut allergy, although I don't know if that was the case in-utero.
Feeding babies peanut-laden food may be an antidote for most babies, but not necessarily ALL babies.
But first you must read the controlled scientific study that I have referenced along with the articles describing the study and its background.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/23/388450621/feeding-babies-foods-with-peanuts-appears-to-prevent-allergies
Israeli kids are much less likely to have peanut allergies than are Jewish kids in Britain and the United States.
"My Israeli colleagues and friends and young parents were telling me, 'Look, we give peanuts to these children very early. Not whole peanuts, but peanut snacks,' " said Gideon Lack of King's College London, who led the scientific study.
Peanut snacks called Bamba, which are made of peanut butter and corn, are wildly popular in Israel, where parents give them to their kids when they're very young.
That's very different from what parents do in Britain and the United States, where fears about food allergies have prompted many parents to keep their children away from peanuts.
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The article begs the question: is there a significant increase in peanut allergy per 1000 population since the 1950s? If so, what is the cause(s)?
It seems puzzling. Perhaps the prepared food industry is loading products with various "additives" - that may include peanut protein, that combine and lead to peanut sensitivity?
Then again, is the problem related to congenital issues: genetic 'triggers' that were awaken by certain peanut treatments that food processors use to modify the chemical 'architecture' of peanuts?
I know one thing for certain. In my 'baby boomer' generation, peanut allergy was rare; and the children of Boomers seemed to have an inordinate sensitivity to peanuts. I don't think the incidence of peanut allergies was suppressed.
Two things come to mind:
First, peanut allergy always existed except that it affected a smaller stratum of population that had since grown significantly in post-WW2.
Second, during WW2 women were significantly involved in war production - i.e.) "Rosie the Riveter". Women became exposed to industrial pollution on a scale never experienced since industrial production began.
Pollution may have altered weak genetic 'fabric' that presented themselves in their daughters and sons (Boomers), who then gave birth to a generation of children that experienced a higher incidence of peanut allergies than any generation before.
Research funds are needed to discover the source of peanut and other food allergies.
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@Bob Aceti
Maybe Rosie and her working cohort didn’t have the time to work this thing through and help the kids get through it? Not to say that she shouldn’t be working along with her colleagues, but it’s an interesting idea regarding the change in sociological conditions which could have led to this medical phenomenal. I don’t think any other explanation other than sociological could account for this, even the hypothesis that possibly increased amounts of peanut in processed food could’ve led to the induction of allergy. If that were the case, we would’ve seen a difference in the incidence of peanut allergies in the South traditionally, which you don’t.
1
The increase incidence of peanut allergies was at least partly caused by healthcare workers giving bad advice based on zero evidence. For years, doctors advised pregnant women to avoid peanuts and to delay introducing peanut foods to their babies because they theorized that it would protect the babies from allergies. When they finally bothered to do the research, they found that early exposure is actually protective. Oops.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-early-exposure-is-key-to-prevention/amp/
3
I have a son with a severe food allergy. The experts preached total avoidance 20 years ago.. an approach which, in hindsight, turned out to be dead wrong.
So now they want us to believe they have a solution. But as we all know, allergies are unpredictable. Your child may not have a reaction one day and have a severe one the next. This last two decades is a case of the US medical establishment being wrong and now scrambling to correct their mistakes. Try to accept some responsibility and use this as an opportunity for introspection and study.
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@Theresa Wrong, yes. Mistakes, no. All medical knowledge advances with time. The fact that at any point in time something is unknown or as yet undiscovered doesn't make action at that time a mistake. If anyone needs to take responsibility it's those who fail to fund the NIH and other research institutions. Maybe that means we taxpayers.
3
6.5 % of the placebo group required epinephrine? How is that possible? Could it be stress induced anaphylaxis? If possible, it is exceedingly rare. Only one report at the National Library of Medicine, making the 6.5% an extreme report. Further evaluation of this report is required, please.
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@Tom Hogarty, MD when given peanuts after treatment isn’t how I understood this data point
1
@Tom Hogarty, MD Well, they had peanut allergies. They simply weren't getting the actual, small amounts of peanut daily.
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@Tom Hogarty, MD
What is the average rate of epi usage for this population in the real world. Seems to be in the ball park.
1
What really puzzles me is that this treatment is identical to what has been done for hay fever since I was a child many decades ago?
It is also a monumental relief on the social scene since parents can help their offspring without needing to alarm and activate school-loads of other kids and parents. Just hoping there won't be a large latent community of screwball "deniers" like with vaccines.
B.
17
This is tremendous news for the explosion of peanut allergy sufferers. I am sure many a parent will rightfully rejoice.
It begs the question, however, as to whether or not this kind of desensitization could have been done earlier in the child’s life. Although I certainly empathize with the loving parents, I think that so many peanut and other allergies are unfortunately cultivated through dietary restrictions and food sensitivities never seen in previous generations. Our culture has cultivated it. Our DNA has not changed that much in the last 50 years, but the number of peanut allergies has exponentially expanded. Only behavior could explain such a rapid change in our physiology. The peanuts haven't changed. If we could get proper studies to investigate this, then current parents might desensitize the children if medically appropriate, under the supervision of a pediatrician. Then we could avoid having to pay for such expensive albeit great med, and miss out on the social restrictions and health effects of the allergies.
Unfortunately, it seems that people are embracing and cultivating allergies these days. There are true allergy sufferers out there, their burden is immense, but to think that the expense of this medication may be incurred amongst millions because of misinformation and a lack of evidence-based instruction on the part of the medical community is troubling.
This desensitization process can start earlier, with great cost and suffering prevented.
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@Boxengo
Great news for life threatening allergies is usually met with at least one comment like this, blaming the parents or suggesting over reacting among allergy sufferers. My child was not kept from foods, was exposed to all possible allergens, and still ended up with seasonaog andpeanut allergy. His cousin, raised in a different country in a vastly different environment also has a peanut allergy. I don’t know why they have these allergies, but I do know it is not the fault of the parents. Nor are we overreacting. The stress described by these kids and their parents is real. The constant fear and vigilance takes a toll on the child and everyone around them. You become used to it, and it almost seems normal. Then you read a story like this and imagine what it could be like without this fear. It is real, and it is not our fault. Fingers crossed that this is readily available before my child is an adult.
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@Molly I've read that children become stigmatized. I know a mom that has lived is a state of varying anxiety since her daughter was born 18 years ago.
And to those with a little bit of knowledge. How is it the parent's fault if they were following the status quo medical advice at the time?
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@Boxengo
Hardly not seen in earlier generations. I'm 64 years old and have multiple food allergies, including a peanut allergy (mild, fortunately).
We don't really know why food allergies seem to be more common, but the hygiene hypothesis is one possibility.
It *is* true that parents were given advice to avoid foods in infancy that turned out to be the wrong advice, since it increases the prevalence of food allergy rather than decreasing it. But it has to be understood that there's a lot we don't know and that doctors have to give the best advice they can, often without large-scale controlled studies to guide them.
If we're really concerned about speeding up this process, we'll get the government to fund more basic research. The shortfalls are appalling -- for example, we need a more effective flu vaccine, but government is devoting only a fraction of the money that's needed to develop one. Good luck when 1918 flu comes back.
19
Simple solution to the pricing of new drugs, require pharmaceutical companies to make the expenses of each research project transparent.
There is no proprietary information in the amounts of money spent. They have to show it to the IRS anyway.
Then set the time over which they recoup their expense at 30 years just like a mortgage, its not a windfall but it is steady reliable income.
Then by that set the price of the drug, treatment or whatever medical product or service.
6
@magicisnotreal
Not bad ideas, but I think the situation is more complicated than your comments would suggest.
Recouping expenses (including opportunity costs) should be completed before the patent protection ends. The standard length of a home mortgage, 30 years, has nothing to do with drug development.
In addition to recouping expenses would you allow for a ROI for company shareholders? If so how would you determine the ROI?
Finally, assuming the drug development company has more than one drug in its pipeline, it can be hard to untangle how much is spent for each drug separately, especially if the drugs share a common chemistry or mode of action. There is no requirement to break down research and development costs on a drug by drug basis and report it to the IRS.
2
@Tyee
ROI's are not guaranteed, ever. I did the 30 year model is more than fine but could be any number of years and if necessary the patent times could be negotiated.
As for breakdowns of expenses you have got to be kidding me right?
You can bet your money, that would be a guaranteed ROI, on the fact that they know where every single fraction of a penny is spent. They may make it look otherwise since de-regulation but they know. BTW it was easy as pie to track expenses before de-regulation as they were required to.
3
@magicisnotreal Drug companies also have to cover the cost of research into drugs that don't work out.
4
Can we once and for all get some evidence on where this is coming from? Why just in the last 20 years? Nearly everyone I speak with thinks glyphosate is at least partly responsible. I am glad we have hopefully found a new method for treatment but as the old cliche goes 'an ounce of treatment is worth a pound of cure'.
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@Ashley
An article I read awhile ago found that food allergies may be caused by a "perfect storm" of genetic factors like eczema, exposure to dust containing allergens, as well as exposure to the food allergen in general... and being cleaned with baby wipes as a child. The baby wipes leave a soapy residue that allow pores on the skin to stay open and allergens to enter more easily. This would explain the upward trend in the last twenty years - the use of baby wipes became more prevalent during that time. I'm 19 and living with a severe peanut allergy - and I fit these criteria exactly. I personally don't think glyphosate is to blame (in the case of food allergies at least) - I and many of my peers grew up on large farms where it is used often and yet I am the only person I know in my age group with a food allergy, not even just a severe one.
14
@Ashley But if that were true and to some extent it may be, (the truth is we don't know,) but why is it peanuts and not corn or soy that became the worst problem? Peanuts grow under the soil and therefore absorb less glycol phosphate than crops grown above ground. Association is not causation. #sciencematters
3
There's just no known biological mechanism in humans by which glyphosate could be responsible. It's just the current bogeyman, and the latest target for which it's being scapegoated for everything from allergies to zoophilia. Where's the science? Where's the evidence?
4