Anyone with a food allergy or parent of a child with food allergy knows of the constant fear and worry that comes with it. You have to plan, inform, prepare, avoid, monitor, the list goes on. And as diligent as you are, reactions can still occur. Just because someone is allergic to a food, say peanuts, doesn’t mean they will experience anaphylaxis, but it also doesn’t mean they won’t.

For other allergies, there are approved treatments and medicines. You can take medication for your seasonal allergies or when you have a mold attack, you can pursue immunotherapy for many kinds of allergies, but not food. However, that may be changing soon. Last week I wrote about sublingual immunotherapy for eggs and peanuts, and I came across some more information this week worth sharing.

In an article on News-Medical.Net, food allergy expert, Professor Wesley Burks, from Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, North Carolina says he believes there will be a treatment for peanut allergies within five years.

A number of approaches are currently being examined to reduce the impact of the condition such as the development of transgenic plants to produce hypoallergenic peanuts, but Professor Burks says as several peanut proteins are involved in the allergic response, the resulting product could be a peanut which is no longer a peanut.

Professor Burks says future treatments are all focused around curbing the immune response or inducing the immune system to tolerate a specific food allergen, possibly by introducing engineered peanut proteins as immunotherapy, where the food is ingested in increasingly larger amounts on a regular basis.

Many experts believe that the rise of peanut allergies in developed countries is so high because of the hygiene factor (kids aren’t exposed to certain diseases or illnesses anymore, so their bodies don’t build up immunities), others believe that too much exposure while in utero or in breast milk is the cause of peanut allergies. Neither hypothesis has been proven.

In Athens, GA, there is hope on the horizon as well. Researchers at The University of Georgia have recently been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture to further their research towards developing an allergen-reduced peanut (Athens Exchange).

There are multiple allergens in peanuts that cause reactions in susceptible people. One of the challenges researchers face is reducing the amount of these proteins in the peanut, while leaving the plant fertile. Peggy Ozias, a plant geneticist and horticulture professor at UGA, said that so far she and her team of researcher have succeeded in reducing the amount of two of the allergens in peanuts they have modified.

There is still a lot left to do, but this is a hopeful start.