A trial study shows a possible solution for those with food allergies

Laura Schep

 “When I grocery shop, I always read the labels of anything I haven’t tried or haven’t had in a while, and I avoid eating things that don’t have labels and usually have to stay away from dessert food.” –University of Guelph student Kathleen Keon

Anyone living with severe food allergies can attest to how inconvenient and worrisome they can be, often forcing the afflicted to be carrying medication with them at all times in case of a bad attack, not to mention having to constantly check food packaging ingredient lists and notify restaurant servers of their allergy ahead of time to ensure their meals are prepared appropriately.

Fourth-year University of Guelph student Kathleen Keon, who has had a severe nut allergy since childhood is familiar with these difficulties. 

“When eating out, I always tell the waiter or waitress that I have an allergy to peanuts and tree nuts…there is rarely a problem to accommodate that, although a couple times I have been told that the restaurant couldn’t guarantee anything,” said Keon. “When I grocery shop, I always read the labels of anything I haven’t tried or haven’t had in a while, and I avoid eating things that don’t have labels and usually have to stay away from dessert food.”

Six to eight per cent of children residing in North America are afflicted with some type of food allergy, the most common of which include milk, eggs and various nuts, and from an early age are weighed down with the extra responsibility of being particularly careful about everything they ingest.

But what if this could be changed and children with food allergies could build a tolerance to the food that triggers allergy attacks? U of G Food Science professor Yoshinori Mine has been seeking to answer this question through his recent research with mouse models. Mine found that mice predisposed to an egg allergy became desensitized to the allergen after repeatedly ingesting only a particular portion of the protein- one of its smaller subunits, known as a peptide- known to trigger the allergic reaction.

“By ingesting only the peptides and not the whole protein, the body suppresses the urge to react,” Mine explains. “After repeated exposure, the body learns to accept the protein instead of trying to defend itself against it. This approach has huge promise for humans for providing a safer more convenient approach to dealing with allergies in children.”

Mine, originally from Japan, relocated his family from Tokyo to Guelph when his daughter was only three years-old. At such a young age, she was already afflicted with a severe egg allergy that could trigger unpleasant and dangerous symptoms including hives, vomiting, and anaphylactic shock. Although the relocation to Canada was not enough to alleviate his daughter’s unfortunate allergies, Mine has been successfully researching this field of study for some time now.

Mine fed peptides from egg protein over a period of several weeks to a group of mice with egg allergies. Then, he exposed them to the full egg protein. The results were promising with approximately 80 per cent of mice no longer exhibited symptoms of allergic reaction and the remaining mice only displayed symptoms much milder than previously shown prior to his multi-week exposure to the egg peptide treatment. Mine is now looking to gain approval and funding to commence human trials, perhaps as early as next year, although treatment would likely not be made available for a several more years.

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