More on peanut desensitisation
When I wrote about the recent peanut desensitisation trials in the UK I said
This is the first real breakthrough in the search for a cure for food allergies.
I should clarify that.
There is no cure. At the moment there is no sign of a cure. What the British trial demonstrated is that it is possible to raise the threshold of sensitivity — where a child had previously reacted to a very small dose of the allergen, they could now tolerate a lot more before a reaction was triggered. However, the allergy remains. If they eat enough of the stuff they can still have an anaphylactic reaction.
What the desensitisation treatment does is remove the worry of what can happen through accidental exposure, and that’s an excellent thing.