Israeli Scientists Develop Safe Treatment for Peanut Allergies

Peanuts are an extremely healthy snack that is rich in nutrients, and you can purchase them in the shell or peeled and roasted. Peanuts also come in a  myriad of foods including peanut butter, snack food like Bamba, in candy bars, baked goods, and much more.

But for people who are allergic to peanuts, the fact that they are everywhere is very problematic. Peanut allergies cause dangerous reactions including anaphylactic shock. That’s why a trial at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan is so promising. Jewish News reported that 28 of the 32 severely allergic children who participated in a trial of a new treatment were able to eat peanuts without severe reactions.

A New Peanut
The researchers led by Professor Mona Kidon, the head of Sheba’s food allergy research program looked at a new approach that was different from traditional immunotherapy which trains the immune system to accept the allergen. They decided to create a “safe peanut” by altering the structure of peanuts.

The researchers worked with the Volcani Institute, Israel’s national agricultural research center to develop the new peanut strain by tweaking the protein structure so that people’s immune systems will no longer react to them, reported The Jewish Chronicle.

“Instead of making the immune system adapt to the peanut, we said,’ let’s make the peanut a little bit different,’” Kidon told the Jewish Chronicle. It took seven years to create the “don’t panic” Mona strain.

Mona’s Cookies
The new peanut – in a powdered form – was baked into cookies that were named Mona Cookies after Kidon. The cookies act like a medication to train the immune system not to react.

“An allergy is actually a wrong decision,” Kidon said. “Your immune system is deciding that these proteins that you see in milk or in egg or in peanuts are something that are really dangerous.”

 In this recent trial, 32 severely allergic children were given Mona’s cookies two a day. After nine months, 28 of the children were able to eat a small handful of peanuts without allergic reactions. Four experienced a minimal reaction.

While the Mona Cookie trials results suggest that many children who are allergic could develop the ability to eat peanuts doesn’t mean that every child will be able to. This is a promising first step. The next step is to do blind testing with greater numbers of children.