(Newswire.net — February 2, 2015) — Melbourne, Australia – Researchers from the Melbourne-based the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute published a study of children given nut protein with a probiotic. The results show improvement in more than 80 percent of those who took part in clinical trial.
Researchers from the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute gave about 30 allergic children a daily dose of peanut protein together with a probiotic in an increasing amount over an 18-month period.
Researchers said the probiotic used in the study was Lactobacillus rhamnosus. The dose used was equivalent to eating about 20kg of yogurt each day. The results of the study showed 80% of the children could eat peanuts without any reaction.
“Many of the children and families believe it has changed their lives, they’re very happy, they feel relieved,” said the lead researcher, Mimi Tang. “These findings provide the first vital step towards developing a cure for peanut allergies and possibly other food allergies.”
Reliable peanut allergy statistics are not that easy to come by because there is a lot of available research on food allergies in general but not too many studies have been done on the peanut allergy alone. Statistic in the US, however, estimate there are more than 20 million Americans allergic to peanuts. According to the ‘down under’ health watchers statistic, almost three in every 100 Australian children have a peanut allergy.
“We focused on peanut allergies because it is usually lifelong and it is the most common cause of death from food anaphylaxis,” Murdoch Childrens Research Institute lead researcher, Mimi Tang said.
She announced further research to confirm whether patients can still tolerate peanuts in the years to come.
“We will be conducting a follow-up study where we ask children to take peanuts back out of their diet for eight weeks and test them to see if they’re tolerant after that,” Tang said. Though it sounds simple, she warned against trying the treatment at home, as the results also showed some children had serious reactions.
“Some families might be thinking about trying this at home, but we would strongly advise against it. In our trial, some children did experience allergic reactions that were sometimes very serious,” she said.
“For the moment this treatment can only be taken under the supervision of doctors as part of a clinical trial,” Tang said.