Nuts to egg allergies

Institute to test successful strategy in other areas

CHILDREN could switch off life-threatening egg allergies thanks to a treatment being tested by Melbourne researchers.

The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute immunotherapy program for egg allergies mirrors its life-changing 2015 peanut trial.

Children with peanut allergies were given a probiotic with peanut protein in increasing amounts over 18 months.

Four years later, up to 80 per cent of children in the trial are able to safely eat peanuts.

“They are eating peanuts as if they don’t have a peanut allergy. We call it being in remission,” lead researcher Mimi Tang said.

“We’re now hoping to do the same for egg allergies.

“We are hoping to switch off the allergy.

“We don’t know if it’s going to work but it could be very exciting.

“Egg is such a common ingredient and it’s in so many foods and kids have such a difficult time avoiding it.

“Accidental ingestion is common, causing frequent and sometimes life-threatening reactions.”

Antoinette Barallon’s daughter Sarah, 10, has a severe peanut allergy and was involved in the MCRI trial.

“She’s not cured but she eats peanuts regularly. It’s weird watching her eat nuts but she now has no problem with them,” Ms Barallon said.

Her son Jamie, 9, who has a severe egg allergy, will be part of the clinical trial.

“We’re so used to it and our lifestyle is based around his allergy,” she said.

“But it’s hard because egg is in such a lot of foods.”

She said it was “phenomenal and groundbreaking research”.

“It’s not a cure but it’s a step closer to freedom,” she said.

Ms Barallon said she wanted Jamie to “travel and eat out with friends when he is older without thinking twice about it”.

Egg allergy is one of the most common food allergies in childhood, affecting almost 9 per cent of babies in Australia and up to 2.5 per cent of children worldwide.

Professor Tang said if it could be shown “that the probiotic food immunotherapy approach is effective in treating egg allergies as well, this would mean that we could perhaps extend treatment to other food allergies”.

This could include tree nuts, such as almonds and pine nuts, and milk.

Researchers need 80 children aged five to 17 with egg allergies to be part of the trial. Email egg.study@mcri.edu.au or go to mcri.edu.au/ research/ projects/peat-trial