[NVIC] Food Allergy Vaccine
E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER
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"Protecting the health and informed consent rights of children since 1982."

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BL Fisher Note:

The number of American children suffering from life threatening peanut
allergies has doubled in the past five years and the number of Americans
with food allergies has risen from 6 million to 11 million. This runs
parallel with the doubling of asthma, learning disabilities, ADHD; the
tripling of diabetes and a 200 to 7,000 percent increase in autism in every
state in the U.S. during the past 20 years. As more and more vaccines are
mandated to prevent more and more infectious diseases in early childhood,
more and more Americans are stuck on sick. So the pharmaceutical industry
produces drugs and vaccines that medical doctors sell to patients to try to
"cure" the chronic illness that vaccines and suppression of all infectious
disease helped to cause in the first place. What a racket.



http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/10162659.htm
San Jose Mercury News
Posted on Fri, Nov. 12, 2004

Food allergy vaccine promising
REACTIONS TO PEANUTS, WHEAT, MILK CURBED IN DOGS
By Esther Landhuis
Mercury News

It won't keep you from catching chickenpox, but a new vaccine developed by a
Stanford-led research team could one day enable millions of food allergy
sufferers to fearlessly bite into a peanut butter sandwich. Tested in dogs
thus far, the vaccine curbs allergic reactions to peanuts, milk and wheat.

``What we're trying to create is an immune response that protects against
allergies,'' said Dr. Dale Umetsu, the study's lead investigator and chief
of the division of allergy and immunology at Lucile Salter Packard
Children's Hospital at Stanford. His group describes its canine vaccines --
the first to block food allergies in an animal larger and more complex than
a mouse -- in a paper published online today in the journal Allergy.

The dogs in the study didn't start off with food allergies; the scientists
manipulated their immune systems to mimic a human allergic response.

Before getting vaccinated, the dogs could barely eat one peanut before
breaking out in a skin rash. But 10 weeks after immunization, the animals
devoured, on average, more than 37 peanuts before developing symptoms.

Single vaccination

Similar skin tests showed that milk-allergic dogs were able to take in 50
times more cow's milk after getting vaccinated. Unlike today's allergy
shots -- which work only on airborne allergens, such as pollen, and
generally require a booster every few weeks -- a single vaccination was able
to stave off food allergies in the dogs for at least three months.

``We're finally entering a realm where different treatment approaches for
food allergy are being developed and really look like they're on the five-
to 10-year horizon,'' said Dr. Robert Wood, a pediatric allergist at the
Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

The Stanford work -- a joint effort with University of California scientists
at Berkeley, San Francisco and Davis -- comes during an unprecedented rise
in food allergies. In the past five years, peanut allergies in U.S. kids
have doubled, and the number of Americans with food allergies has grown from
6 million to 11 million.

This troubling trend echoes a wider pattern. Since the 1980s, asthma and
allergy rates have risen sharply in industrialized nations, where better
sanitation has spurred a severe drop in infectious diseases. Dubbed the
``hygiene hypothesis,'' some scientists speculate that the two events are
related and that certain infections may rev up the immune system in a way
that protects against allergies and asthma, Umetsu said.

This idea led him to mix into his food allergy vaccines a secret
ingredient -- dead bacteria -- hoping to trick the immune cells into
responding as they would against a routine pathogen.

The end goal is different, though. Most vaccines aim to boost the immune
system so it can destroy the pathogen. However, food allergy vaccines are
designed to spur an immune reaction that suppresses the overblown
physiological responses of allergic individuals.

Before the dog vaccines can be tested in people, the Food and Drug
Administration requires additional experiments to test the vaccine's
toxicity.

Food allergy sufferers are eager for relief. Oakland freelance writer
Claudia Perry has a 5-year-old son whose peanut allergy is severe enough to
trigger life-threatening anaphylaxis. ``It's something that's really hard to
live with,'' Perry said. ``It's really scary that you have to be within 20
minutes of an emergency room. We're all hoping that the researchers find
something.''


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Contact Esther Landhuis at elandhuis@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5458.


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