New Drug Can Limit Potentially Fatal Peanut Allergies

Auburn, March 21, 2003 --- Help may soon be available for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who 
live in constant fear of a potentially deadly exposure to a common snack food — peanuts.

Using an experimental drug once a month, researchers have found that they can lessen their allergic 
reaction to peanuts.

For a small number of people, exposure to even trace amounts of peanuts can produce violent allergic 
reactions, even death among some people.  An estimated 1.5 million Americans are allergic to peanuts, and 
between 50 and 100 die each year from exposure.

Common physical reactions associated with these allergic reactions include abdominal pain, vomiting, hives, 
breathing problems and tightness in the throat.  Some reactions are so severe that they can cause drops in 
blood pressure, inability to breathe and, in some cases, death.

Businesses and schools throughout the country already take this threat very seriously, especially in cases 
where they have employees or students who suffer from this condition.

“As a registered dietitian, I once advised an early childhood development center that had a strict rule against 
bringing in any peanut products for fear it would cause one of their students to undergo a violent reaction,” 
says Dr. Jean Weese, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System food scientist.  “They were concerned 
that even trace amounts of these peanuts would become airborne and eventually be ingested by him.”

That is why researchers are so exited about the experimental drug, known as TNX-901.  In a study involving 
84 people, ages 12 to 60, the drug was shown to change sensitivity so that instead of reacting to only a half
peanut, allergy sufferers could consume an average of nine whole peanuts before reactions occurred.   One-
fourth of the subjects with the highest dosages avoided reactions even after consuming 24 peanuts.

Still, the future of TNX-901 is uncertain.  Researchers hope to conduct a larger study that would include 
children as young as 2 or 3 and then seek marketing approval.   However, this will depend on whether the
three companies involved in the development of the drug will stick with it or opt to go with a similar drug 
known as Xolair.

Xolair, which is considered an effective peanut allergy drug, already has been tried with 4,000 asthma 
sufferers, though not with peanut allergy sufferers.  Some doctors say that as soon as it is available — 
which may be as early as July by some accounts — they will prescribe it as a severe allergy drug.

Whether one or both of the drugs become commercially available, peanut sufferers likely will pay an 
enormously high price — as much as $10,000 dollars a year by some estimates.

Part of the problem associated with peanuts stem from its widespread use in the Western diet, Weese says.  
Peanuts, tasty, nutritious and highly versatile from the standpoint of food processing, are used in a wide
variety of foods, most notably in cookies and candies.

However, because of their routine use, manufacturers sometimes fail to include them in food labeling.  
Failure to include all ingredients on a food label is an all-too-common practice, and for peanut allergy
sufferers, the results are often catastrophic.

“Up to about 75 percent of food recalls occur after industries have failed to close off a line that dumps some 
food ingredient, such as peanuts, into a product that was not supposed to include them,” Weese
says.

“Food labels are supposed to carry all ingredients according to their level of predominance within the 
product,” she adds, “but this becomes highly problematic when ingredients end up in the wrong products.”

That is why the lives of most peanut allergy sufferers are strewn with risks.

“For many of these people, a mistake in labeling could mean death,” Weese says.  “That is why they simply 
can’t rely on food labeling to protect themselves against exposure.”

One college student, for example, died after eating cookies that contained small amounts of peanuts.  As it 
turned out, the manufacturer of the product had decided to add some unused peanut batter associated
with another cookie product.  However, the label on the product never was changed to reflect this fact.

(Source: Dr. Jean Weese, Extension Food Scientist and Auburn University Professor of Nutrition and 
Foods, 334-844-3269.)