Peanut Allergy Remedy Offers Both Hope and Risk
It’s a promising treatment, but there are caveats that keep it from being a slam dunk for either patients or investors.
No more peanut-free zones?
Photographer: Dina Rudick/Boston Globe/Getty Images
Food allergies alter lives and can have deadly consequences. That’s one of the reasons that full results of a study of Aimmune Therapeutics Inc.’s peanut allergy treatment, published Sunday in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, are so exciting.
The findings validated and fleshed out details of the study that were first released in February. The key takeaway: After a year of treatment, two-thirds of children who took the medication were able to eat small amounts of peanuts. This isn’t a cure. But it has a shot at U.S. government approval, and could make the lives of children with few options easier and safer. That gives the medicine huge commercial potential.