Peanut Allergy Success & Bone Marrow Donors Needed
September 08, 2011
Just a quick update that Bo is doing well with his peanut allergy treatment. He continues to eat 34 peanut butter M&Ms everyday to maintain his peanut desensitization. Bo is not “cured” of his peanut allergy but he has become significantly enough desensitized to peanuts that our world is nearly normal again.
FYI, Bo’s grandmother is undergoing treatment for acute myeloid leukemia. Did you know that the bone marrow donor database is quite small, leaving many people without a match? It also may surprise you that immediate family is frequently not a good DNA match. So we wanted to take this opportunity to help raise awareness that just about anyone age 18-60 can become part of the bone marrow donor database with a just a simple cheek swab to collect some DNA. Learn more about becoming a bone marrow donor at www.marrow.org.
For our new readers, a quick recap of the past 5 years of Bo’s peanut allergy journey is provided below:
- Nov. 2006: Bo is diagnosed with a life threatening peanut allergy after losing consciousness during an anaphylactic reaction to a bite of a candy. Suddenly, we realize it is life threatening for Bo to eat out, enjoy treats at schools, travel or even have birthday cake at parties.
- June 2007: Bo starts a peanut allergy study at Arkansas Children’s Hospital over 400 miles away in Little Rock requiring 14 hour car trips … every other week… for over two years… to monitor his reaction to increasing peanut doses, do skin tests and blood work!
- June 2008: Bo fails his peanut challenge and we learn during the unblinding of the year 1 clinical results that he had been randomly assigned to a placebo control group the first year and not actually receiving peanut powder. We are now faced with having to repeat a year of the peanut allergy treatment study starting at the minimal introductory dosage. We are emotionally drained and financially frustrated but ultimately realize we are blessed to be in a treatment program whose future results will now be validated by a lack of response to the placebo treatment.
- April 21, 2009: Bo and his mom are included in a USA Today article entitled "New strategies help build immunity against food allergies" by Medical Reporter Rita Rubin.
- May 2009: In order to get enough peanut protein daily to maintain his increasing levels of desensitization, Bo graduates to eating more than 30 peanut butter M&Ms every day instead of peanut powder. This phase of the study only requires quarterly visits instead of twice monthly.
- Aug. 2009: Bo’s peanut allergy treatment is going so well he no longer has to eat at the peanut safe table at school.
- Oct. 2009: Bo passes peanut challenge after 1 year of peanut allergy desensitization treatment.
- June 2011: Bo is interviewed as part of a KTHV 11 Little Rock news segment video entitled "Helping your child cope with food allergies".
Thank you all so much for your many prayers and kind e-mails. We pray that all people dealing with food allergies soon have the option to participate in food allergy desensitization treatments if they want to and one day for the preventive cure to end the fear, anxiety and suffering caused by life-threatening food allergies!
Sincerely,
Bo's parents
That is great progress! It is a long road requiring lots of time, courage, patience and sacrifice. Just stay the course during the ups and downs and know that these clinical food allergy desensitization treatments make it possible to "normalize" your life against life threatening food allergies.
God bless and good luck! Please keep us updated on your peanut allergy treatment progress.
Posted by: Bo's Parents | July 31, 2012 at 06:57 AM
This blog is something worth sharing for! Now many parents will be glad to know about desensitization treatments. Many peanut-allergy children will be relief from allergy symptoms and will live as normal children.
Posted by: Juliet | May 21, 2012 at 09:00 PM
One of my sons also have some allergies which really made us worry more everyday. We are putting him into a program and we are really seeing progress.
Posted by: Robbie | May 12, 2012 at 07:01 AM
I have a 18 month old son who was given the news of having a peanut allergy at 15 months old. Scary! I think your website is wonderful. I am just wondering how the program is going now and how Bo is doing. Could you give us an update please.
Posted by: Joanna | March 19, 2012 at 01:42 PM
I wanted to thank you and Bo for sharing your experiences. Reading your blog back in 2009 helped inspire us to apply to a similar program at Stanford. Our child has been in that program for 2 years and is currently at 12 peanuts (or equivalent) per day. Without your blog, I'm not sure we would have done it.
Posted by: John | March 10, 2012 at 12:19 AM