More people than ever before suffer from life-threatening food allergies.
Will new research & treatments help reverse this trend?
She thought, “This is from something I’m ingesting.
I just felt sure of it in my gut.”
Within minutes, his face looked like someone had smeared rouge all over it.
She immediately sent a photo to her pediatrician, who confirmed it looked like a milk allergy.
No one else in the familyeven Miles’s twin brotherhad these allergies.
“This was out of nowhere.
It felt like a cruel joke from the universe for a food professional like me,” says Desmond.
Since then, Miles, now 5, has taken three trips to the ER for accidental ingestion.
The prevalence of peanut allergy alone more than tripled between 1997 and 2008.
The million-dollar question is: Why is this happening?
What has changed so drastically to trigger this widespread problem?
“There was certainly a problem before the guidelines happened.
In fact, they may have made the growing problem even worse.
Allergy Guidelines Gone Wrong
Food allergies used to be rare.
Even as recently as the early 1980s, few children had them.
Often, however, pediatricians gave this advice to all parents, not just those with infants at risk.
The guidelines came with the following caveat: “Conclusive studies are not yet available to permit definitive recommendations.
However, the following recommendations seem reasonable at this time.”
If these guidelines seem rather Draconian, they were.
Yet they were based almost entirely on “expert opinion,” not solid research.
Experts had the best intentions, but were working with limited data.
This was, again, based largely on “expert opinion.”
Then, in 2015, everything changed.
This landmark study stunned the world.
There has been no formal update for other allergens, but it was a big lesson learned.
Researchers want to give patients more options.
It can, however, have impressive results.
One called AR101 is now in FDA trials.
Can We Wait for the Future?
“So waiting for more studies,” he says, “is not a trivial exercise.”
“But the goal of the therapy is to normalize life.”
And in the majority of kids, it does.
He can now eat them all.
“It has changed our lives,” says Kalim.
“I used to be in constant fear when I wasn’t with him.
Now he can be with his friends, be independent.
It brings tears to my eyes.”
Miles’s doctor, for one, has never mentioned it as a possibility outside of a clinical trial.
But eventually she and her husband changed their minds.
Cooking became a way to reclaim control.
“Miles has five major allergies, and that feels like a lot.
But there are a gazillion ingredients in the world,” she says.
“I have a go at think of it like, Oh, look at all these possibilities!”
And she dreams of a day when a treatment will provide the ultimate protection for her son.
“An accident with food could kill Miles,” she says.
