This New Treatment Could Be The End Of Peanut Allergies In The County

Peanut butter and jelly is an all-time favorite for many of us, but many kids can't have it because of a peanut oil allergy. New treatments could bring that to an end.

According to a recent research, there could be a new treatment that would eliminate the allergy to peanut oil for up to four years.

The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health recently spoke with Professor Mimi Tang who was the author of a paper that studied peanut allergies in children. Professor bides her time between seeing patients and doing research as well.

There are quite a few reasons why peanut allergies tend to haunt children. According to Prof. Tang, peanut allergies are:

• A big problem in both children and adults
• Peanut Allergies tend to be persistent throughout their life. In other words, they have to live with the allergy for the rest of their life
• Frequent reactions happen to these children because peanuts and the oil are pretty prevalent in the foods they eat.

The study conducted was to show how Probiotics can help to stay these allergies in people.

In the test they took a peanut protein and mixed it with a bacteria called Lactobacillus Rhamnosus, which is known to reduce allergic reactions and bring a calming to the immune system.

The purpose behind mixing the two was to change the way that a child's immune system reacts to peanut oil, or peanuts.

After that, they began to test this on children with a peanut allergy. They gave some of the children the placebo and the others they gave the probiotics for about a year and a half.

The results were pretty promising.

The results showed that about 80-percent of the kids that were given the probiotics didn't see any signs of the allergy after 4-years. 70-percent passed a test that showed that the peanut tolerance was long-term.

Keep in mind that these were small groups who received these tests. The testers would like to conduct more tests on larger groups before coming out with an official analysis and to see if the probiotics will help with other allergies that people are living with.

The funding for these tests came from Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the Australian Allergy Foundation.

The hope is that someday children can enjoy a good, old-fashioned peanut butter and jelly sandwich, like we did. More importantly, that peanut oil won't cause them harm and discomfort in the future.