Reports say nearly 33 million Americans have food allergies, and about 11 percent of adults ages 18 or older have at least one.
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Some of us may be living with a certain food allergy or know someone who has one. According to the Food Allergy Research and Education, 33 million people in the United States have food allergies.
The United States Department of Agriculture says there are nine leading causes of food allergies identified in the US, which are milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. Some may be wondering if there is a treatment for food allergies; there is, it’s called oral immunotherapy.
“Is a treatment for food allergies where patients undergo a process called desensitization to try to reduce the risk of future reactions with accidental to the foods they’re allergic to,” said Skye Miller, UPMC Allergy and Immunology PA-C.
Skye Miller practices in Williamsport at UPMC Allergy and Immunology. She says oral immunotherapy, or OIT, works by the patient actually ingesting increasing amounts of the food they are allergic to, with the goal of trying to retrain their immune system to be less reactive to the food.
Miller says to be clear, OIT is not a cure; it’s simply a way to manage your food allergy. “There are several different types of food allergies, and OIT only works with IgE-mediated food allergies. Patients can undergo OIT for various foods, most commonly, though, it’s peanuts and tree nuts.”
On whether oral immunotherapy can be performed on both children and adults, Miller says it can be. She says typically in her office, it’s children that undergo OIT, but adults certainly could as well. She says OIT can be especially helpful for patients or families that are dealing with significant anxiety related to food and food allergies.
Miller says there can be some side effects to OIT. “Anytime you expose yourself to a food you’re allergic to, there is a risk for a life-threatening allergy known as anaphylaxis, which could manifest as difficulty breathing, hives, even a drop in blood pressure,” Miller says that this is why increases in dose should always be done in an allergy office with medical supervision.
She says more commonly, side effects are GI related, so nausea, heartburn, upset stomach, and those types of things. As far as how long treatment lasts for OIT, Miller says typically the build-up process, on average, is about 15 weeks, but it can vary from patient to patient.
“After that time, you’re considered to be on maintenance therapy, so you stay at the same dose, but you do have to take that dose every single day indefinitely to keep the desensitization going,” said Miller.
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