Oral Immunotherapy for Food Allergic Patients

Summer is here but the work at the Center for Allergy at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center (newly renamed as Yitzhak Shamir Medical Center) has not cooled off. We are pleased to report on our program's recent progress, particularly in the realm of treenut allergy treatment and followup.

As of mid-July , thirty patients have successfully completed one of our tree-nut oral immunotherapy (OIT) programs to either walnut (20), cashew (5), hazelnut (4), or almond (1).  Importantly, patients have been able to continue consumption of their relevant tree-nuts, which is vital for maintaining their desensitization state. Some of the patients have already returned to our clinic for post program checkups, affording us the opportunity to examine immunological markers that may change with successful OIT treatment.  Additionally, as we described in previous updates, several of our patients are allergic to multiple tree-nuts. We have begun investigating whether successful desensitization to one tree-nut via OIT might yield indirect desensitization to others.  Overall, the treenut desensitization program highlights the interplay between the clinical and the research aspects of our work at the Center for Allergy. Clinically, we aim to relieve the burden of food allergy from patients and their families.  In the research arena, we hope to utilize the information from the clinic to better understand the desensitization process, so that it can be optimized and better tailored for individual patients.

Your support allows us to proceed in this work, and we thank you!