An oral immunotherapy treatment involving probiotics has been re-evaluated in a follow-up four-year study. The study found that four years after treatment, most peanut-allergic patients involved in the original study of the probiotic immunotherapy were still able to consume most peanuts without ill effect.
Allergy immunotherapy company Prota Therapeutics announced the results of the follow-up study after their publication in the journal The Lancet, Child and Adolescent Health. The study is a follow-on to a 2013 study involving peanut-allergic patients given the oral therapy.
Four years later, 80 percent of those patients were still peanut-tolerant at normal levels.
The majority of those patients were reporting being able to consume peanuts normally and 70 percent were proven to be tolerant in a follow-up oral challenge test. The original study had 82 percent of peanut-allergic patients passing that oral exam, showing that over four years, most of those patients did not lose their tolerance levels.
Prota plans to market the immunotherapy after gaining government approvals, starting in Australia. The company licenses the therapy from its creator, the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. The immunotherapy treatment is a combination probiotic treatment created by MCRI, who tested it until it reached the human trial stage. MCRI conducted this follow-up study for Prota.
“These children had been eating peanut freely in their diet without having to follow any particular program of peanut intake in the years after treatment was completed. Over half were consuming moderate to large amounts of peanut on a regular basis, others were only eating peanut infrequently,” said Professor Mimi Tang of MCRI, who pioneered the treatment.