"Toxin or Treatment?" - Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Ingesting small doses of peanut products guards against allergic reactions, but an undercurrent of anxiety persists. Brief testing decades ago indicated that shots for food allergies weren’t safe. So around mid-2000s, scientists began to feed children the allergen instead. The results of early clinical trials were promising, said Hugh Sampson, MD, director of the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who has studied immunotherapy in food allergies for many years. Stopping treatment can quickly alter the immune system, said Cecilia Berin, PhD, a professor of pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, because immunotherapy requires constant exposure. Physicians with deep roots in food allergy immunotherapy hope those new to it tread carefully.
- Hugh Sampson, MD, Professor, Pediatrics, Allergy and Immunology, Dean, Translational Biomedical Research, Director, Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Food Allergy Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
- Cecilia Berin, PhD, Professor, Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai