New Food Allergy Treatment on the Horizon?

By Kelley Lindberg

Dr. Fred Finkelman
(photo courtesy of FARE)

FARE (Food Allergy Research and Education) is reporting today that they’re awarding a $734,986 research grant to leading immunologist Fred Finkelman, M.D., at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine/Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, in his efforts to suppress anaphylaxis. Dr. Finkelman is developing a therapy that may be able to desensitize a patient to ALL of their food allergies at the same time, and potentially in as short a time period as 24 hours.

With this therapy, a patient would probably be injected with a unique antibody that Finkelman and his team have developed in their lab. The antibody would then target mast cells and remove the IgE and IgE receptors on those mast cells, which are responsible for releasing the chemicals that cause the symptoms of an allergic reaction. In a previous study, Dr. Finkelman injected mice with this antibody, and the treatment prevented anaphylaxis.

In plain English, this means that after being injected with this new antibody, the patient’s body will stop reacting to food allergens!

Right now, Dr. Finkelman and his team are still working with mice, so human trials are still years away. And their therapy in mice has taken weeks to build up a resistance, so they are hoping to shorten that timeframe significantly with their future study. Dr. Finkelman emphasizes that his process would not cure allergies, but would suppress allergies. He believes it has the potential to suppress food allergies, skin allergies, and even asthma and environmental allergies (hay fever). But this is the type of therapy that so many of us are desperately hoping for, so I am thrilled and grateful to FARE for supporting Dr. Finkelman’s research with this significant grant.

To read more about this grant and Dr. Finkelman’s work, check out these links:

• “New Study Aims for Quick Suppression of Food Allergies”
• “A Conversation with FARE Grant Recipient Fred Finkelman,MD”
• “Suppressing Food Allergies Quickly Is the Goal of UC Research Team”

Food Allergies Cost U.S. Families $25 Billion Every Year

By Kelley Lindberg


We know kids are expensive. They start out expensive, they transition into being more expensive, and they end up being super-ridiculously, eye-wateringly expensive by the time we get them into college. According to a report by the USDA called “Expenditures on Children by Families, 2012,” the annual cost for raising a child ranges from $12,600 to $14,700.

But guess what? Kids are even MORE expensive if they have food allergies. Like 30% more expensive. That’s $4,184 more per year for each child you have that suffers from food allergies. So bump that total cost of raising your kid up to $16,784 - $18,884 per kid, per year. (That settles it. The next time I have to argue with my son over doing his homework, I’m trading him in for a new car.)

With food allergies affecting about 8% of children (about 1 in 13), the mind-blowing total for what food allergies cost U.S. families each year is just shy of $25 billion per year. That’s the estimate from a national study published this month (“The Economic Impact of Childhood Food Allergy in the United States,” JAMA Pediatrics, Sept. 16, 2013). Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, a luminary in the field of food allergy for many years, headed up the study that quantified the economic impact associated with food allergies in children. Costs measured in the study included direct medical costs (like doctor visits, ER visits, and hospitalizations), as well as out-of-pocket expenses like the costs of special foods, and the loss of jobs or work hours and other lost income opportunities because of having to care for a child with food allergies.

The point of the study wasn’t just to depress us, I know. (We’re good at that all by ourselves.) The point was to make another argument in favor of increasing the funding for and priority of research, education, awareness, and advocacy for families with food allergies. Food allergies continue to grow at an alarming rate every year, and until we establish a reliable cure, their economic impact will continue to grow right along with them.

For more details about the study, see “New Study Finds Food Allergies Cost Billions of Dollars Each Year” on FARE’s website.

 

New York Times Magazine: “The Allergy Buster”

by Kelley Lindberg

"Your child is always playing near a precipice that is visible only to you: you may be able to keep her from falling off, but you can never move her away from the edge.” --Melanie Thernstrom, "The Allergy Buster"

A cure. That’s what we want. It’s what millions of kids (and millions more adults) need. Is there one tantalizingly close? It looks more and more like that answer could be “yes.”

 

Oral desensitization is one of the most promising treatments for food allergies being studied today. By introducing a carefully measured, incredibly tiny amount of the allergen every day, increasing it slightly at specific intervals over the course of several years, researchers are demonstrating that many of their patients are eventually able to tolerate the food allergen safely.

 

However, it’s not as easy as it sounds. The amounts must be carefully measured – not something you can do in your own kitchen with a blender and a measuring spoon. Many patients in these studies still have anaphylactic reactions to the dosage and must be treated with epinephrine shots, steroids, and antihistamines. The patients have to carefully control their activity level after taking the dose, because increased body heat can trigger reactions. Timing, commitment, control, and monitoring are essential so that the treatment doesn’t become the trigger for a life-threatening reaction.

 

And after several years of treatment, when the patient appears to be “cured,” the understanding now is that he or she will have to eat that allergen every single day to prevent the allergy from returning. For a nut, that could be a serving of 16 nuts every day. If it turns out you don’t actually enjoy the taste of that food, that could be a difficult life sentence to face.

 

But despite the downsides, oral desensitization is still the most exciting possibility for a cure on the horizon, and it’s one that many of us are anxiously awaiting. I desperately want my son to be able to go to college and leave his food allergies safely behind. So I was very encouraged to read this informative and thought-provoking article by Melanie Thernstrom on the New York Times Magazine website: “TheAllergy Buster: Can a Radical New Treatment Save Children With Severe FoodAllergies?”

 

Thernstrom talks about a trial her son in participating in that is going beyond the single-allergen desensitization method to multiple-allergy desensitization. The article is long, but well worth the time to read.

 

That light at the end of the tunnel may be getting closer after all.

 

 

Mapping Food Allergies Across the US

by Kelley Lindberg


A new study published in the July issue of Clinical Pediatrics, “GeographicVariability of Childhood Food Allergy in the United States,” attempts to map the prevalence of food allergies in children across the country. What an interesting idea, and even more interesting results! Dr. Ruchi Gupta, the lead author of the study, says that this study shows for the first time that food allergy rates are higher in denser population areas (like inner cities), and become steadily lower the more rural and sparse the population becomes. The study also reports that the states with the highest rate of food allergy (higher than 9.5 percent) are Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Alaska.

 

What does this mean? It means we have a lot of new questions to ask, and very few answers. But new questions are good! They add to the clues researchers need as they dig ever deeper into the causes of food allergies.

 

The data Gupta and her researchers uncovered also contained some surprises and some contradictions. For example, the researchers found that food allergy seemed greater in the southern states than in northern states, but that contradicts earlier studies that suggested greater exposure to sunlight (and therefore vitamin D) might help protect against food allergies. In addition, some of the states with the highest rates are close to water sources – does water affect food allergies?

 

In an interview in the Fall 2012 issue of Allergic Living magazine, Gupta explains that what this study does is show some intriguing trends, but we don’t have nearly enough information about them to explain the results. For instance, why are southern states higher? But if that’s the case, how do you explain Alaska showing up in the highest seven states? If proximity to bodies of water makes a difference, how does Nevada make it into the top seven? And if population density shows such clear differences in rates, what is causing it? Do people eat different foods in urban settings than they do in rural areas? Is it a difference of environment, rather than food? Education? Hygienic patterns? Something completely different that we haven’t even dreamed up yet?

 

Intriguing questions, for sure. And questions like these will undoubtedly spawn whole new areas of research, which can bring much-needed information to the table as we try to develop treatments, preventions, and cures for food allergy. And that’s what it’s all about, for those of us in the food allergy community.

 

Thank you, Dr. Gupta and your fellow researchers, for giving us more questions. Without those questions, we could never hope to find the right answers that may someday make a real difference.

FAI’s Food Allergy Prevalence Study

by Kelley Lindberg


In 2008, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that 1 in every 25 children had a food allergy. Now, just three years later, a new survey sponsored by the Food Allergy Initiative (FAI) estimates that 8%, or 1 out of every 13 children, has a food allergy.

Published in the July 2011 issues of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, this latest study analyzes interviews from over 38,000 households with at least 1 child under 18 years of age to discover “The Prevalence, Severity, and Distribution of Childhood Food Allergy in the United States.”

One out of every 13 children is an alarming number – that means 2 children in every classroom in the United States has a food allergy. This study verifies what many people in the food allergy community and in the medical profession have been feeling for some time – food allergies are increasing at an appalling rate.

Here are some of the other findings published in this study, published on FAI’s website:

• 38.7 percent of the children in the survey had a severe or life-threatening allergy
• 30.4 percent had multiple food allergies
• Children with food allergies were most commonly allergic to peanuts (25.2 percent), milk (21.1 percent) and shellfish (17.2 percent), followed by tree nuts (13.1 percent), and egg (9.8 percent)
• Severe reactions were most common among children with a tree nut, peanut, shellfish, soy, or fin fish allergy
• Children aged 14-17 years were most likely to have a severe food allergy
• Food allergies affect children in all geographic regions
• Asian and African American children were more likely to have a convincing history of food allergy, but were less likely to receive a formal diagnosis when compared to white children

While food allergy has been an increasing concern in the medical world, sparking a growing number of research projects and studies, this new study may help to propel even more projects into the funding spotlight. In addition to potential treatments and cures, research into the possible causes of food allergy, as well as identification of the individual protein molecules that cause reactions, will carry us much further towards a real understanding of this complex and frustratingly confusing disease.

In addition, the results of this survey may encourage more food manufacturers to examine their production processes and facilities for ways to more closely control cross-contamination with the major allergens. Especially for manufacturers of kid-oriented foods and snacks, knowing they are eliminating up to 8% of their potential customers by not adhering to strict allergen cross-contamination prevention may be just the catalyst they need to change their processes.

It would be easy to look at this study and see only the bad news: food allergies are becoming more wide-spread. But it’s important to look at the positive news this also represents: because food allergies are becoming so wide-spread, more researchers, manufacturers, chefs, teachers, doctors, coaches, colleagues, and neighbors will become committed to finding cures, treatments, safe practices, recipes, and other solutions to eliminating food allergy from our world sooner, rather than later.

The Importance of Being Vigilant at Restaurants

by Kelley Lindberg


In May 2011, a report called “Restaurant Staff's Knowledge of Anaphylaxis and Dietary Care of People with Allergies” appeared in Clinical & Experimental Allergy, the journal of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The authors, S. Bailey, R. Albardiaz, A.J. Frew, and H. Smith, reported on the results of a telephone questionnaire administered to staff members at 90 table-service restaurants in Brighton, England.

What they found was pretty disconcerting. The good news is “eighty-one percent reported confidence (very or somewhat) in providing a safe meal to a food-allergic customer.”

The bad news is that at least some portion of that 81% got a lot of their food allergy information wrong on the questionnaire, which means there’s a good chance they’ll contaminate a food-allergic customer’s food anyway.

Here are some of the highlights (lowlights?) of the report from the journal’s website:

• 90% reported food hygiene training.
• 33% reported specific food allergy training.
• 56% could name three or more food allergens.
• 38% believed an individual experiencing a reaction should drink water to dilute the allergen. (Not true!)
• 23% thought consuming a small amount of an allergen is safe. (Not true!)
• 21% reported allergen removal from a finished meal would render it safe. (Not true!)
• 16% thought cooking food prevents it from causing allergy. (Not true in most cases! Some milk-allergic people can tolerate milk when it’s baked in foods, for example, but it should always be assumed that cooking does not render an allergen safe!)
• 12% were unaware allergy could cause death. (Eeek!)
• 48% expressed interest in further training on food allergy. (Well, at least that’s good news!)

This study is a good reminder that we can’t assume restaurant staff really understands the serious nature of a food allergy until we’ve discussed it with them fully.

Some of the tried-and-true methods for ensuring your dining-out experience will run as smoothly as possible include:

1. Checking the restaurant’s website for allergen information
2. Checking a restaurant site, like www.allergyeats.com, for other customers’ reviews.
3. Calling ahead and speaking with the manager about your specific allergies and what the restaurant can do to accommodate you.
4. Carrying an allergy card with you that explains what you can and can’t eat (and if you’re traveling, get an allergy translation card, too, from http://www.selectwisely.com/).
5. Informing the waiter of your allergies, even if you’ve already talked to the manager.
6. Double-checking when the food arrives that the cook prepared it safely.
7. Keeping your EpiPens and antihistamine with you at all times.

Many restaurants are really making an effort to accommodate food-allergic customers, so it’s worth the extra effort to find the ones that will be safe for you.

(You just might be a little extra careful if a trip to Brighton, England, is in your future!)

Latest Study on Allergies and Allergy Testing

by Kelley Lindberg


Last month, a new study on allergy testing from Quest Diagnostics, manufacturer of the ImmunoCAP® IgE blood test for allergy diagnostic testing, was released. Quest Diagnostics used its access to the largest national database of allergy blood test results – with results from two million patient encounters – to analyze the effect of allergies on the health of Americans. The 4-year study didn’t measure the prevalence of allergies in the general population (plenty of other studies have done that). Instead, it looked at people who were already suspected of having allergies (both food and environmental allergies), in an effort to see how allergies are changing or affecting the allergic population.

Some of the study’s key findings include:

• The overall sensitization rate (patients having an allergen-specific IgE) increased by 5.8% over 4 years.
• The number of patients tested for allergies increased over those 4 years by 19%, which Quest says is significantly faster than the growth in general laboratory testing.
• Sensitization to ragweed and mold is increasing rapidly, which is consistent with other studies that show climate change may be linked to an increase in environmental allergies (because of the change in growing habits of plants, for example).
• Men showed higher sensitization rates than women.
• Children showed higher sensitization rates than adults.
• Peanuts were the most common food allergen in kids who were tested for food allergies, with 30% of the kids under 5 years of age and nearly 25% of the kids from 6 to 18 testing positive for peanut.
• Patients with asthma have more allergies (averaging 4.1 allergens per person) than patients without asthma (averaging 3.4 allergens).

Another interesting part of the study is that it confirms the “Allergy March,” which shows a disease progression where children with sensitivities often develop different allergic diseases as they mature, for example: moving from a single food allergy in childhood, to environmental allergies, to asthma.

In most cases, this study seems to be confirming what we already know or at last suspected about allergies and allergy testing from smaller studies. This study is significant, however, because of the sheer size of the patient base, and the fact that it used blood tests rather than patient-response surveys for its data.

To read the complete study and learn more about its findings, click Quest Diagnostics Health Trends Allergy Report 2011, “Allergies Across America.”

Your Family Doctor vs. an Allergist

by Kelley Lindberg


One of the first questions I ask someone who has been newly diagnosed with a food allergy (or who suspects they may have a food allergy) is “Have you seen a board-certified allergist?” There’s a good reason for this question.

A January 2010 article published in Pediatrics magazine, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, included an article called “Food Allergy Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs of Primary Care Physicians,” by Ruchi S. Gupta, MD, MPH; Elizabeth E. Springston, BA; Jennifer S. Kim, MD; Bridget Smith, PhD; Jacqueline A. Pongracic, MD; Xiaobin Wang, MD, MPH, ScD; and Jane Holl, MD, MPH.

In this article, the authors describe their research into food allergy knowledge and perceptions among pediatricians and family physicians in the United States. They surveyed 407 primary care physicians around the U.S., 99% of which reported that they provide care for food-allergic patients.

The results of the study show that while general-practice physicians and pediatricians are of course invaluable in many ways for many common illnesses or preventative care, their knowledge of a complex, specialized, and rapidly changing field like food allergies is not necessarily what most patients or parents of food-allergic might expect.

According to the article, participants in the study answered only 61% of knowledge-based items correctly. Only 80% of the physicians knew that the flu vaccine is unsafe for egg-allergic patients. While 90% knew the number of food-allergic children is increasing in the United States, only 23% knew that milk-based yogurt and cheese are unsafe for children with IgE-mediated milk allergies.

Even more concerning: “Fewer than 30% of the participants felt comfortable interpreting laboratory tests to diagnose food allergy or felt adequately prepared by the medical training to care for food-allergic children.”

Some other particularly concerning statements from the article:

• “There was some confusion among participants regarding signs and symptoms suggestive of an underlying food allergy.”
• “The majority of participants believed that anaphylaxis posed the greatest threat to young children rather than teenagers.”
• “…only half chose the correct concentration and route of administration for epinephrine in the event of food-induced anaphylaxis.”

The article’s authors suggested that part of the problem may be that “Most pediatric and family medicine training programs do not offer formal training in food allergy, although experience likely varies by program.” As broad and far-ranging as the entire field of medicine is today, that’s not surprising. A general-practice physician tries to be a generalist to do the most good for the most patients – they usually strive to be well-grounded in the basics of healthcare, with a more surface-level knowledge of various specialties. But there are simply not enough hours in the day for anyone to be a specialist in everything.

From this study, it’s important to realize two things:

1. Patients with food allergy probably should not rely on their family doctor or pediatrician for expert diagnosis, treatment, and ongoing care of their food allergies. Instead, they should seek out the knowledge and experience of an AAAAI board-certified food allergist. (To find one in your area, click here for the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology Physician Referral Directory.)
2. Physicians are often aware of their limitations, but even so, they may not be willing to refer their patients to allergy specialists. In some cases, because of their limited knowledge or experience, they may even downplay the seriousness of food allergy symptoms, such as treating severe eczema with creams instead of identifying a possible root cause of food allergy.

The authors conclude by rating the overall knowledge of their sampled physicians as “fair.” The authors go on to recommend: “With the recent increase in childhood food allergy and the threat posed by food-induced anaphylaxis, it is important for generalists to be educated about the diagnosis and treatment of this condition.” They also suggest that general physicians can take advantage of the many resources already available to increase their knowledge, such as “a food allergy practice parameter, outlining risk factors, diagnostic techniques, and treatment plans,” which was developed and published in 2006 by the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology and the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology.

Please understand – pediatricians and family doctors are essential and invaluable, and I am NOT trying to undermine them. Instead, I am just pointing out that once they identify a possible food allergy, you will probably be better served by a dedicated allergist, in the same way that if your family doctor suspects (or confirms) cancer, you would probably then go see a cancer specialist.

I absolutely love and depend upon my son’s pediatrician for most of his ailments and normal childhood problems. But I also love and depend upon my son’s allergist for all of his food-allergy issues. We can’t live without either of them.

Food Allergy Desensitization – Rushing Now Could Jeopardize Long-Term Success

by Kelley Lindberg


Two weeks ago, I wrote about a new British study being funded to research desensitization for food allergies on a larger scale than some previous studies (“New Desensitization Research Project in England”). Whenever I write about a new study like this, I worry that allergic individuals will try desensitizing themselves – or, more worrisome, their children – without benefit of the careful dosing and treatment regimen that the studies’ doctors provide.

I talked to Dr. Douglas Jones, a board-certified allergist in Layton (Rocky Mountain Allergy, Asthma, Immunology), last week about this very issue. He had just attended the February meeting of the Utah Society of Allergy and Asthma and the Annual meeting for the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. He asked me to share with everyone some highlights of those meetings regarding this topic of food desensitization.

There are some limited studies that show some promising results as far as patients being desensitized and even becoming tolerant to foods they are allergic to (peanut in particular). There is not a standardized protocol yet. This is something that is currently under investigation and of high interest to allergists across the country and here in Utah. When there is appropriate medical evidence and support, food desensitization is something that will likely be offered by Dr. Jones and some other board-certified allergists in their clinics and under their supervision sometime in the near future.

Given the risks associated with this and the limited data, it is important to proceed appropriately and safely. Please do NOT try things at home on your own. Dr. Jones understands the frustrations of patients, your anxiety, and your desire to have safer and more effective treatment. He is just as anxious to try to provide a safe and effective treatment for patients with food allergies. He just wants to emphasize that it is important to go about things the right way, however. That way, when we do start using them in a clinical environment, we’ll have the best information and protocols possible for success. A little caution now is the key to long-term success. And that long-term success – in the form of a food allergy cure – is what we all want for our children and for their children in the years to come. Stay tuned, this is a rapidly developing area!

Many thanks to Dr. Douglas Jones for allowing me to share this information with my readers.

Hope – But Don’t Try This At Home

It’s all over the news – friends are calling me and emailing me, telling me about the latest study reported last week at a meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. (Read the New York Times report here.) In this study, peanut-allergic children were given a daily dose of peanut powder to desensitize them to peanut allergens.

Basically, by introducing tiny, carefully controlled amounts of the allergen on a daily basis, doctors are slowly building up resistance in the patients’ bodies. Eventually, the theory is that the patients’ bodies are retrained, so that they no longer view the peanut proteins as allergens.

Most of the children in the study are tolerating the therapy without suffering from allergic reactions. This is great news. It means that for most of the kids in the study, their bodies’ immune systems are being slowly retrained, so that they can eventually eat a few peanuts safely.

The doctors involved in the study believe that in two or three years, an actual treatment for peanut allergy may be developed, based on the findings from this study and other related studies going on throughout the world right now.

This is wonderful! At this point, there are two promising treatments – desensitization, and the Chinese herbal treatment FAHF-2.

Though we appear to be on the verge of breakthroughs, we still need to be careful. Doctors involved in this study (and others like them) are worried that people will run out and try these treatments at home, on their own, with disastrous results.

One reason why caution is essential is that the treatment does NOT seem to work for everyone.
Four kids dropped out of the study because they couldn’t tolerate the therapy – even the tiny doses involved in the therapy still caused allergic reactions. Since the therapy starts with a dose equivalent to 1/1000th of a peanut, that’s pretty disheartening for the parents of those four kids.

Another aspect to consider is that these studies are relying on carefully measured doses, in carefully monitored lab situations where help for anaphylactic reactions is immediately available. Most of us don’t have the capability to measure 1/1000th of a peanut accurately, nor the detailed knowledge of the protocols used in the testing to administer these doses safely. A doctor’s guidance is essential.

A third reason for caution is that all of the studies I’ve read about so far are using children with only a single allergy right now. Multiple allergies are difficult to account for in a controlled study, so doctors are only studying how desensitization works on a single allergy – throwing lots of allergies into the mix could greatly change doses, reactions, and chemical interferences.

So while the outlook on the horizon is rosy, don’t throw away your EpiPens yet. Keep your eyes and ears open for news, talk to your board-certified allergist, and follow the study results carefully. But don’t try this at home just yet. But in a few years, perhaps life will be much easier and safer for many of our children. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Another Study, Another Contradiction

Yet another study about peanut allergies has been published this week, and this one just adds to the confusion. Welcome to the non-exact science of food allergies!

The October 2008 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology has published an article detailing a study in which Jewish populations in the United Kingdom and in Israel were compared. They used Jewish subjects in both countries to try to level the playing ground between the two groups as much as possible, with both groups sharing similar genetics and social and economic backgrounds.

In the U.K., mothers are advised to avoid peanuts while pregnant and nursing and to avoid feeding their infants peanuts, so at nine months of age, only 10% of the U.K. children in the study there were eating peanuts. In Israel, there is no such recommendation, so 69% of Israeli children were eating peanuts. What they found is that 1.85% of children in the U.K. have peanut allergy, while in Israel, only 0.17% of the children have peanut allergy.

In other words, in the U.K., where mothers limit children’s exposure to peanuts, kids were ten times more likely to have a peanut allergy than in Israel.

Now what?

The conclusion many people will leap to is simple – early exposure to peanuts is GOOD for you! But is it really? Other studies have shown that early exposure INCREASES the rate of peanut allergy. As so often happens, scientific studies are contradicting each other, and no one understands why.

Many of us who have children with peanut allergies would question this finding, at least from our own experience – I ate peanut butter sandwiches throughout my pregnancy because it was one of the few foods I could stomach during those nauseating months, and yet my son reacted the first time I let him have a bite of peanut butter. If early introduction should have prevented his allergy, all those sandwiches I ate when I was pregnant should have made him a little peanut-eating superman. On the other hand, he was over a year old when I gave him that sandwich, so maybe if I’d given him peanut butter when he was 4 or 5 months old… who knows?

The authors recognize that one study such as theirs cannot be used to reverse current recommendations. In fact, the study says more “randomized controlled interventional studies…are therefore required to determine whether peanut avoidance or the early dietary introduction of peanut will prevent [peanut allergy]. Until such evidence is obtained, current recommendations should remain unchanged.”

Human beings love simple answers. We like one-to-one correspondences. We like to find a direct line between two points. And it really, really makes us mad when we find a nice, straight line, and then someone has the audacity to point out that our straight line falls apart when the end-points are moved around a bit.

So although the study used two groups of Jewish children, all the variables weren’t controlled. What environmental chemicals are used in the U.K. that aren’t used in Israel? What other foods are frequently given to Israeli children that could be providing a kind of protection that U.K. kids aren’t eating? Do both groups have the same chemicals in their drinking water, in their cooking utensils, in their bread? What medicines do the children in each group receive? How long are they nursed?

There are thousands of variables involved when it comes to analyzing the human body chemistry, and I don’t envy scientists the job of sorting them all out as they wage this ongoing battle against food allergies. But I salute them and cheer them on.

I don’t know what to think about this new study. I don’t know that I believe early introduction will save children. I don’t know that I DON’T believe it.

But I do believe that the more studies like this that are performed, the closer we’ll get to understanding what is going wrong inside our bodies. It won’t be easy – when our bodies decide a nutrient is a poison, something outside the boundaries of logic is at work, and it will require thousands of different scientific minds thinking in thousands of different directions before we round up enough points to show us that the lines are really connecting in a meaningful way.

I’m glad this study has been published – not because I want to see a new push for early introduction of peanuts, but because I want to see another group of scientists say, “What? Is that true?” and dig into their own new study to verify, contradict, or more likely, cast more confusion on this conclusion. That’s the only way we will advance this frustratingly non-exact science of food allergies.