Dr Robert Wood: Even Treatment Failures Move the Food Allergy Field Forward

Even when there are treatment failures, the knowledge gained through food allergy studies helps to move the field forward, explained Robert A. Wood, MD, director, Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Medicine; 2018-2019 president, American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI).

Transcript

What lessons have you learned from the patients and their families in your food allergy studies, even from those that don’t respond to the therapy?

The lessons really are the data that comes from the study for the most part. The families that join studies tend to be highly committed to the entire experience. The kids are remarkably resilient and put up with reactions and food challenges and all those sorts of things.

The knowledge gained is what moves the field forward, and it ranges from tremendous success, where someone is virtually, completely desensitized—not cured, but they can eat food as they wish—to the 15% or so of patients who are complete treatment failures.

And then, long-term the results are, to me, a little bit discouraging. And we’re presenting here at this meeting [2019 AAAAI Annual Meeting], a long-term follow-up of our peanut studies, and over half of all the patients who we thought were successfully treated had electively gone back to strictly avoiding peanuts because they thought life was easier avoiding peanuts than taking a daily dose of peanut.