Study: Yogurt cured kids’ peanut affliction

Yogurt may help cure your kid’s peanut allergy. Serving sufferers large amounts of probiotics, which are found in yogurt, may also be the key to curing all food allergies in the future, according to a recent study.

Kids who were allergic to peanuts were fed the nut as part of an oral immunotherapy treatment — that’s when patients are given small, incremental amounts of the food they’re allergic to — combined with a course of probiotics. Most were then cured of the allergies for at least four years, according to the study in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal.

The research determined that the addition of probiotics to the immunotherapy was much more successful than the immunotherapy alone.

“We were very excited by these findings,” study author Mimi Tang told Lancet. “To us, it really shows that the probiotic peanut combination can actually change the immune response to peanuts and provide benefits, long term, years after having stopped treatment.”

For the study, 56 children with peanut allergies were divided into a group given a placebo, and another that received the probiotic called Lactobacillus rhamnosus — a bacterium commonly found in yogurt. After 18 months of treatment and one month off, the group given the probiotic ate some peanuts and waited to see if an allergic episode would commence.

But 82% of kids who received the probiotic had no reaction at all. Four years later, Tang asked those children to stop eating peanuts for eight weeks before returning for a follow-up. Out of 12 children who returned to be tested, seven remained allergy-free.

“We had children who came into the study allergic to peanuts, having to avoid peanut in their diet, being very vigilant around that, carrying a lot of anxiety with that,” Tang said. “And at the end of treatment and even four years later, many of these children who had benefitted from our probiotic peanut therapy could now live like a child who didn’t have a peanut allergy.”

An allergic reaction to peanuts is the most common food-related cause of anaphylaxis — swelling of the throat,