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"Imagine sending your child to school each day never knowing if they might come home.\u00A0That\u2019s the fear many parents across the country, not because of accidents or child predators but food allergies. But there is new hope.A study spearheaded by a Stanford University researcher may not just offer hope to kids with severe food allergies. It can tackle more than one allergy at once.In an exam room at Lucille Packard Children\u2019s Hospital in Mountain View,\u00A0 Alex Eiger, 8, has his mouth open wide.\u201CAhhh\u2026.,\u201D groans Alex, as he opens his jaw as far as he can to insert the first of more than a dozen peanuts.\u00A0A year ago, you would never have seen Alex get even close to this food.\u00A0 Alex is severely allergic to peanuts.\u00A0 In fact, he\u2019s allergic to a number of foods.\u201CEggs, peanuts and cashews,\u201D says Alex.Alex's mother, Diane, adds that pistachios are bad for him, too.\u201CThe first time that I fed him the tiniest speck of scrambled egg,\u201D his mother says, recounting the day he was a baby, \u201Che broke into hives in about 30 seconds.\u201DIt wasn\u2019t just hives, either.\u00A0 Alex grew lethargic and began to drool.\u00A0He was so young at the time, just a 1-year-old, that they had to wait another six months to test him for allergies.\u00A0 Until then, his family had to avoid any of the top eight or 10 foods that are typically the most allergic.Neither Diane nor her husband have allergies, nor does their oldest daughter, Samantha.\u00A0 Having a son with an allergy as basic as eggs changed their entire lives.\u201CThe next day that you find out your child has food allergies and you're almost grieving for normalcy,\u201D Diane says, \u201Cbecause everything is scary.\u201DScarier still, for Alex\u2019s family, was the times that he wasn\u2019t at home.\u00A0 If he was at a friend\u2019s house, or even at school, Alex\u2019s family had no control over what foods were around him.\u201CIf my friends were having peanut butter and jelly,\u201D Alex says of his school lunches, \u201CI would have to go to a different table.\u201DIn an effort to avoid the exposure to foods that made him deathly ill, Alex was separated from those friends.\u00A0 He had to carry an emergency plan and a self-injecting needle of a medication called epinephrine with him in case he had an allergic reaction.\u00A0 The best advice the Eigers could find, though, was to just try to keep Alex away from those foods.\u201CAll you're told is avoid these foods, and every day is a risk,\u201D says Diane Eiger.But then one day, through a parent\u2019s group, Eiger heard a talk from Doctor Kari Nadeau.\u00A0Nadeau was speaking about a groundbreaking study that helped kids with allergic reactions to foods by doing the unthinkable: giving them the very foods that caused their allergic reactions.\u201CThey give very small amounts of the very foods that you're allergic to and that process is called desensitization,\u201D Nadeau said.Nadeau, a tall, energetic doctor who is immediately passionate about her subject material, is quick to point out that she\u2019s not the only doctor doing these kinds of \u201Cde-sensitization\u201D studies.\u00A0During her research, however, Nadeau found that most kids aren\u2019t allergic to just one food.\u00A0Given that it takes anywhere from one to three years for a patient to get used to the foods, it could take years, maybe even decades for children to be able to eat the foods that had put them into shock.\u201CIn a person's lifetime, if they have five allergies, that could take them 15 years,\u201D says Nadeau.\u00A0But Nadeau found that multiple foods could be used at the same time.\u00A0Now she\u2019s doing research, approved and partially funded by the Food and Drug Administration, that allows her to give kids up to five foods at once to desensitize them.\u00A0The process starts with nearly microscopic amounts of\u00A0 the food ground into a kind of flour that the kids then eat.\u201CIt's like a little staircase,\u201D points out Alex. \u201CEvery time I come here they'd give me a little bit more.\u201D\u201CIf it's safe, you work your way up to a teaspoon and this process occurs for up to two to three years,\u201D Nadeau said.This is what Alex did, and now he\u2019s graduated the Nadeau study.\u00A0Yet, there is a caveat to the study. Nadeau\u2019s study has found that it\u2019s possible, maybe even probable, that the allergic reaction would return if patients stop eating the foods.\u00A0 Therefore, the\u00A0 foods that the kids were allergic to have to be eaten every day.\u00A0Alex now eats 16 peanuts, 16 cashews and one whole egg every day.\u00A0But for Alex\u2019s mother and her\u00A0 family, it\u2019s worth the process.From the exam room, Alex extolls the virtues of his new found love of Chinese food -- wonton soup is his favorite dish -- and the fact he can choose nearly any birthday cake for his upcoming celebration.Eiger said it\u2019s not just the relief of being able to eat new foods.\u00A0 It\u2019s far deeper than that.\u201CYou hear stories about the birthday parties and the cupcakes and being able to eat these foods, and that's nice,\u201D says Eiger.\u00A0 \u201CTaking away the daily fear, that your child, when they walk out the door to go to school, you don't know if they're coming back because of somebody else touching them.\"She added that food allergies could have put Alex in the emergency room, or even killed him.Taking away that daily anxiety and daily fear, Diane says, is huge.Nadeau is quick to point out, though, that her research is not a cure. She points to the fact that Alex has to eat the foods every day, or the allergic reactions could return.\u00A0Alex still carries an epi-pen, an emergency plan, and Benadryl at all times.Nadeau, however, is hopeful that in the future her process, which is essentially like creating a new drug, could come in capsule form, like antibiotics, and given in packs of carefully metered doses by doctors.\u00A0She adds that until they know what has caused these allergies, they won\u2019t find a cure.\u00A0In fact, studies, she says, have shown that the number of kids who \u201Cgrow out\u201D of their allergies as they age has drastically dropped.\u00A0 Yet the number of food allergies has risen.Still, she sees great hope in these studies.\u00A0It is critical, Nadeau says, that parents or general practitioners not try to do this desensitization themselves.\u00A0 Nadeau\u2019s study is heavily monitored by the FDA and each dose is carefully monitored.If you want to find out more about the studies that Nadeau is conducting, you can find them here:http://foodallergies.stanford.edu/about_us/Other allergy studies across the country can be found here:http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/foodallergy/Pages/default.aspx"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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