Cure for Allergies? Don't Hold Your Breath

All the UK news sites have been breathless the past few days because of an announcement made at the British Association Festival of Science.

Dr. Ronald van Ree, of Amsterdam University, said that claims of a vaccine against allergic reactions are "realistic." An article by Anne Roberts at earthtimes.org said that:

According to [Ree], scientists are scrutinizing the possibility of using genetic engineering to render the proteins that cause allergic reactions ineffective. The drugs developed through these techniques will work on the immune system to make it stronger to fight allergies. It is also possible that scientists will modify the protein in the allergenic foods to develop other variants of foods that do not cause allergies.


They are also using weaker variants of the allergenic proteins to develop anti-allergy medicines. “This allows scientists to develop hypo-allergenic variants of these molecules for application in safer immunotherapy that will induce little or no side effects,” Dr Ree said. Some of the foods that are known to cause severe allergies are eggs, fish, milk, peanuts, wheat, and nuts like almonds, hazelnuts, cashew and others.

While this research is good news for those with dairy allergies, reality is always harder to pin down. Even the optimistic Dr. Ree doesn't expect any of these products to hit the market for seven to ten years. As a reality rule of thumb, I'd recommend doubling those numbers. And that's assuming that the research actually pans out. Far too many promising lines of inquiry fail to make it out of the lab.

In the meantime, avoidance is still the best medicine.