Researchers found that an injectable asthma medication called omalizumab can stop allergic reactions in some people with multiple food allergies. Harvard Public Health spoke with the study’s first author, Robert Wood, director of pediatric allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Why study this topic?
Treatment for food allergy is very limited. Until very recently, the only treatment we had to offer patients was to stay away from the food and carry epinephrine in case of an accident. Only one other treatment is FDA approved, and that is oral immunotherapy for peanut allergy. But the difficulty is that most patients with food allergy are allergic to multiple foods. So this was an opportunity to study a treatment that would not be food-specific and give an option for those who are allergic to multiple foods.
What did you find?
What we found was that there was a dramatic difference between getting the real drug and getting the placebo, and that a majority of the people had a remarkable level of protection. But we also found there was a range in response. So even though more than half the people had this very, very large increase in their protection, some of them had lesser degrees of response, and that’s something we’re still trying to figure out.
What would you like to see happen based on the results of this study?
My goal is to provide more options for our patients. For many, many patients, this is something that can really be life-changing in terms of the freedom that it may provide them.
—Leah Rosenbaum
(Study in The New England Journal of Medicine, February 2024)
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