Therapy may help some with deadly peanut allergy NEW YORK | NEW
YORK (Reuters Health) - Peanut allergy has proven to be a tough
nut to crack. While there's still no way to make peanuts
completely safe for people who are allergic to them, an
experimental therapy may make them less deadly, report
researchers from Germany and the US. While the research holds
hope for the hundreds of thousands of American kids who are
allergic to peanuts, there's a lot more research to do before
the therapy is ready for "prime time," Dr. Wayne Shreffler, an
investigator on the study, told Reuters Health. Unlike other
food allergies -- which might disappear as kids grow up or
respond to doctor-supervised "challenges" allowing a child to
build up a tolerance to the food -- a peanut allergy usually
lasts a lifetime, Shreffler and colleagues note in the Journal
of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. And the severity of
reactions may vary widely; one accidental exposure may lead to a
minor rash, the next could be fatal. The research team