Oral Immunotherapy: Treating Food Allergies One Tiny Bite at a Time

Milk, soy, eggs, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, sesame, fish and shellfish — the list goes on.

There are more than 32 million people, including children, who have food allergies in the U.S. One bite of the wrong food could kill them.

New therapies were approved just as COVID-19 was hitting, and researchers worry that not everyone is aware of them.

“I was throwing up and my skin was really rashy,” said Adelina Ziemann, recalling an allergic reaction. She is allergic to peanuts, and she knows all too well that she can’t enjoy everything her little sister, Zoe, can.

Her mom, Amanda Ziemann, recalled another time Adelina had a reaction.

“She and her friend got into a bag of what they thought was M&M’s but were Reese’s pieces,” she said.

One in 50 children has a peanut allergy like Ziemann. It’s the most likely food to cause a reaction. In fact, there’s been a 21% increase in peanut allergies in children since 2010.

New immunotherapy, or OIT, is the latest therapy that slowly introduces tiny doses of the forbidden food.

“We actually start with 1/600th of a peanut,” said Dr. Melanie Makhija, an allergist and immunologist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital.

In 2020, the FDA approved the first treatment for children ages four to 17 with a peanut allergy. Palforzia is a drug made from peanut flour.

“The goal of oral immunotherapy is to trick the child's body into thinking they're not allergic,” Makhija further explained.

A recent study found that 72% of people who suffer from a life-threatening peanut allergy didn’t even know OIT existed.

After one year of OIT, Ziemann can now eat one peanut’s worth of protein a day.

“Every morning, I mix in peanuts with something else and I have to eat it,” Ziemann said.

Patients who begin OIT will need to continue to expose themselves to small doses of peanut protein for the rest of their lives or the life-threatening reactions could return.