Study: ‘Children with food allergies can be cured by oral immunotherapy’

According to the ORKA study, a collaboration between Deventer Hospital, Reinier de Graaf Gasthuis, Martini Hospital and Emma Children’s Hospital, food allergies due to oral immunotherapy can simply be a thing of the past. With this therapy, you give children a small dose of a product to which they are allergic every day.

Fully healed

Now health care providers advise children with food allergies not to eat these products. “But our research shows that if you expose very young children (still babies) to foods that they are allergic to, they can be completely cured,” said pediatric allergist and lead researcher Ted Klok. In the past year, 35 children completed oral immunotherapy. “32 of them can now eat anything without fear of an allergic reaction.”

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start young

It is important to start treatment as early as possible. “We know that in children of four years and older, the allergy usually no longer disappears,” says Klok. The study treated children between the ages of 9 and 24 months, which was a success. But the success rate of 90 percent only seems achievable in this age group, according to Klok. The researcher is positive about the future. “Imagine: instead of having a lifelong food allergy, always having an epi-pen in your pocket, just being able to eat and drink everything all the time.”

Source: Deventer Hospital

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