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Feb 20, 2009
Kids with severe peanut allergies were able to eat the food after building up their tolerance with a daily dose of peanut flour, British doctors report today.
By the end of a small, six-month study of four boys, the children were able to eat up to five peanuts a day — not so many that they could safely sit down to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but enough that they didn’t need to worry about accidentally swallowing peanut ingredients hidden in other foods, according to research by Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge in the journal Allergy.
"You wouldn't want to say it's a cure because it's not that and gives people false hope," says Wesley Burks, a professor of pediatrics at Duke University on whose protocol the British study was modeled. But, "As long as you use the treatment, the disease is better."
Feb 11, 2009 | 4
Top brass at Peanut Corp. of America (PCA), whose contaminated peanut products are blamed for sickening 600 people and possibly killing eight others since September, refused to testify today at a congressional hearing. The company closed a second plant, this one in Plainview, Tex., yesterday after tests confirmed it also was contaminated with salmonella.
PCA President Stewart Parnell and Sammy Lightsey, manager of PCA's Blakely, Ga., plant, invoked their constitutional right to remain silent (to avoid providing information that might be self-incriminating evidence of illegal action) during a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on the salmonella outbreak. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the company knowingly shipped contaminated products from the Blakely plant, which was shuttered after the feds traced the salmonella outbreak in 44 states to peanut butter, paste and other ingredients made there.
Oct 22, 2008 | 4
The number of children with food and digestive allergies has increased by 18 percent over the past decade, a new report shows, underscoring a trend reported by concerned parents and teachers.
The number of kids under 18 with those allergies climbed from 2.3 million in 1997 to 3 million last year, according to a report released today by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Some 90 percent are caused by just eight foods: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat.
The findings are based on a national health survey of the parents of 9,500 children who were asked whether their kids had experienced a digestive or food allergy in the previous year. Because the results aren’t based on allergy diagnoses, that makes it unclear whether the rise is real or reflects a greater awareness of the condition, says CDC statistician Amy Brandum, who co-authored the report.
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