2.8 min. read
Researchers are postulating that a gut bacteria ‘transplant’ may be the key to treating, or even curing some common food-related allergies… But some may balk when they learn that the ‘cure’ entails swallowing bacteria from other people’s guts…
The author of the source post for today’s background report, Stacy Leasca, calls them ‘poop pills’. The researchers who are developing them call them ‘fecal microbiota transplant capsules’. Whatever you call them, they’re bacteria from the poop of people who don’t share your allergy…
A new approach
Gut bacteria ‘transplants’ are a new approach to an old technique. Literally, a different direction.
Since early in last century, Doctors have advised parents whose kids who show sensitivities to certain foods to give their kids small amounts of whole or diluted versions of those foods – to gradually de-sensitize them. The younger you start, the better. ..
Lost wisdom
But the generations who came after the Late Boomers were weaned off that idea by new generations of doctors, who learned more and more about allergies. And relied more and more on paraphernalia and pills to treat aliments of all kinds. Desensitization ‘therapy’ faded from the public consciousness. I can personally attest that some insistent Boomers who suggested the technique to their own kids, and their kids’ kids, were branded ‘old’ school’, and worse. Dismissed with an indulgent smile and just the tiniest shake of the head in the negative.
And allergies – particularly food-related ones – ran wild.
A renaissance?
Since the Millennium, though, authorities including researchers, MDs, and even the organizations that support folks with allergies, have slowly come to embrace desensitization again. Particularly in the direction of the most severe food allergies: peanuts, fish and eggs.
“An estimated 1.8 percent of the US population is allergic to peanuts, which works out to just a bit more than 6 million people,” A recent Food & Wi9ne story tells us. “[That] may feel small, but as an article published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Public Health explained, ‘Estimates are that about 13 people die from peanut-related anaphylaxis each year.” Adding, “For those living with peanut allergies, their health-related quality of life, i.e., their ability to live fulfilling lives, is impacted.’”
What they did
In what amounts to a ‘proof of concept’ trial, 15 adults aged 18 to 33 were chosen based on their negative reaction to 100 milligrams of peanut protein or less. That’s less than half a peanut.
Each subject swallowed 36 capsules of frozen stool from one of three healthy, nonallergic donors. They were taken over time, in stages, under medical observation.
What they found
Only six of the 15 subjects showed improvement in their peanut reactions. That was disappointing, but just raised a new question researchers are now trying to answer.
“Among those six, the researchers found a rise in a type of immune cell that helps the body tolerate food, along with higher blood levels of cholate, a bile acid,” the F&W story recounts.
“[And] those who did show a response appear[ed] to be paying it forward. When researchers gave responders’ post-treatment stool to allergy-prone mice, the mice were protected from severe re-actions to an egg allergen. Stool from the non-responders offered the mice no such protection”
The takeaway
“Food allergy reflects a failure of oral tolerance, the process by which the gut immune system learns to accept food, and what this study shows is that the right bacteria can help restore that process, working through bile acid metabolites to promote the immune cells that enforce tolerance,” says Dr Talal Chatila, MD, Director of Translational Immunology at Boston Children’s Hospital, said in a statement. “Knowing how the bacteria restore tolerance to food in allergic individuals allows us to optimize the therapy for more effective outcomes.”
It also paves the way for further research into the effect. Which is needed to see if the technique works for other food allergies. And may open door to advanced procedures for administering bacteria transplants.
My take
It’s great to see traditional wisdom finding a way back into the modern world. Even if it took almost my lifetime for it to complete the ‘orbit’.
And it’s great to see another glimmer of hope for folks who suffer from potentially deadly allergies. I look forward to the day they can throw their Epi Pens away!
~ Maggie J.