Blood Test Might Help Tell When Peanut Allergy Is Gone: Study

FRIDAY, Jan. 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A type of treatment to help build up resistance in people with peanut allergy might leave telltale signs in the people's immune-system DNA, a new study reveals.

The findings suggest that a blood test for these DNA changes could be used to monitor the long-term effectiveness of so-called "immunotherapy" in patients allergic to peanuts, according to the researchers.

There is no cure for peanut allergy, but researchers are examining whether consuming increasing amounts of peanut powder helps desensitize people to the peanut allergen. After participating in this doctor-supervised therapy, patients typically are told to eat some peanuts every day for the rest of their lives.

However, it's not possible to test patients to determine if they can safely stop eating peanuts every day, study senior author Dr. Kari Nadeau, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a university news release.

"At first, eating two peanut butter cups a day might seem fun, but it gets a little boring and a lot of people might stop," said Nadeau, who also is an immunologist at Stanford Hospital and Clinics and the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. "Our new finding can help us try to determine whether, for the long term, someone's allergy has truly been shut off so people can eat ad lib."

The study included 20 children and adults with peanut allergy who had spent two years building up their immunity. They were able to eat a 4-gram serving of peanuts each day without suffering a severe allergic reaction.

The participants were told to avoid peanuts for three months, and then the researchers gave them a small amount of peanut powder to determine if their allergy had returned. The allergy came back in 13 patients, while seven remained allergy-free, the study authors said.

The researchers then analyzed blood samples taken from these two groups, as well as from people with peanut allergy who had never received oral immunotherapy. The investigators found that the DNA in white blood cells, which help reduce allergy response, was different in each of the three groups of patients.

Nadeau said this test might one day help doctors in deciding whether a person "can safely go off of immunotherapy, or if they need to continue to eat the food every day." It could also help determine whether a person might benefit from a longer course of immunotherapy, she said, but more study is needed.

The study was published online Jan. 31 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

More information

Food Allergy Research and Education has more about peanut allergy.

Black Children, Teens More Likely to Return to Hospital for Asthma: Study

MONDAY, Feb. 3, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Financial and social hardships are the major reasons black children and teens are twice as likely as whites to be readmitted to the hospital for asthma, a new study suggests.

Researchers looked at nearly 800 asthma patients, aged 1 to 16, who were admitted to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center between August 2010 and October 2011. Fifty-seven percent of the patients were black.

Overall, 19 percent of the children were readmitted to the hospital within a year. This included 23 percent of blacks and 11 percent of other children, most of whom were white, according to the study, which was published online Feb. 3 in the journal Pediatrics.

Caregivers of black children were much more likely to say they had financial and social hardships, such as being jobless and not having a car. These hardships accounted for about 40 percent of the racial disparity in asthma readmissions.

"Reducing disparities in such outcomes will be critical, especially since payment reform will be based more on quality outcomes and less on health care encounters," study author Dr. Andrew Beck, a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's, said in a hospital news release.

"Our findings suggest that a more intense patient- and population-level focus on the financial and social hardships that underlie racial disparities may provide one path for achieving better outcomes," Beck said.

Study senior author Dr. Robert Kahn, a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's, said there is great potential to make changes to existing clinical practices.

"Transportation barriers might be addressed with home delivery of medications, job barriers with a connection to job training and both helped by a community health worker," Kahn said. "The goal would be upstream, community-based prevention, rather than paying for readmissions."

Other factors that might explain why black children and teens with asthma are more likely to be readmitted to the hospital include pollution, exposure to secondhand smoke and poor living conditions, Beck said.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about asthma.