A childhood without grilled cheese sandwiches, milk, ice cream or even a single M&M would be tough for any kid, but imagine being born into an Italian family and never getting to eat lasagna or cheese pizza either.
Such was the life of 9-year-old Ludovica La Rosa, who was born with a dairy allergy so severe that a cheeseless slice of pizza once sent her into anaphylactic shock because the ham in its topping had been cured in a dairy-based preservative.
Last year, Ludovica's parents enrolled her in a study at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford looking at a new technique for treating milk allergies. Her parents were skeptical and understandably anxious about an experiment that would require Ludovica to eat larger and larger doses of milk powder.
But more than a year later, she seems to be cured.
"We were prepared for her to experience this allergy forever," said her father, Gregorio La Rosa. "But since March 2010, she has been able to drink milk or eat any dairy product - as much as she wants, whenever she wants."
The Stanford study is one of several recent trials that have shown promising results for curing or at least lessening the impact of food allergies. The basic concept behind all of the studies is that if patients are given tiny doses of the food they're allergic to, their immune system will be desensitized to the allergen.
More food allergies
Research into food allergies has exploded in the past five to 10 years, partly due to a big rise in allergies among children. For reasons that aren't yet understood, food allergies have increased more than 20 percent among children since the mid-1990s, according to the government's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Roughly 4 percent of children under age 18 have a food allergy, although most of those will naturally outgrow their allergy by the time they're teenagers.
A food allergy is a severe immune reaction to a protein or chemical in a certain type of food. If people are exposed to a food they're allergic to - even in very small amounts - their immune system will react strongly to attack the allergen, causing symptoms that range from merely unpleasant, like hives or a rash, to life-threatening, like a swollen airway that prevents them from breathing.
People with food allergies have to be constantly on guard against exposure to their allergen. Parents worry about sending their allergic children to school or to play dates at a friend's house. Restaurants can be especially tricky - Ludovica had an allergic reaction even when her parents were doing their best to protect her.
"In families where a child has an allergy, it controls everything," said Dr. Peg Strub, chief of the department of allergy, asthma and immunology at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco. "For some of these children, they really feel very isolated."
For at least 100 years, doctors have experimented with exposing patients to their allergen and trying to trick the immune system into no longer treating it as a threat. But such experiments have always been risky because of the danger of a serious allergic response. Doctors today are quick to warn that people should never attempt to treat an allergy on their own by exposing themselves to something they know they'll have a reaction to.
But in recent years, researchers have been testing new methods that they hope will desensitize patients to the allergen. They include sticking patches to the skin or placing drops under the tongue. Some researchers are studying Chinese herbal therapies for allergies. Scientists are looking at designing a nonallergenic peanut, one of the most common food allergies.
"There's so much more hope than there was even five years ago," said Dr. Kari Nadeau, who led the milk allergy study at Packard Children's Hospital. "This field has really bloomed. We're actually giving cures to people with food allergies."
What sets Nadeau's study apart from earlier tests is that patients are first given a relatively new drug, called omalizumab, that essentially shuts down the part of their immune system that responds to certain allergens. Therefore, in theory, patients could be exposed to the allergen and not suffer an allergic reaction.
That would help them get through the desensitization stage as they increase their exposure to the allergen. If the treatment is successful, patients eventually will stop taking the omalizumab and no longer have an allergic response. The Stanford study looked at only 11 children - one dropped out early in the study, and the other 10 are now able to eat as many dairy products as they like, said Nadeau.
"I came in to this study pretty cynical," she said. "But we really did make a dramatic improvement in patients who had near-fatal food allergies to milk. These were kids who couldn't eat a Goldfish cracker or an M&M without having an anaphylactic reaction."
Additional study needed
Nadeau acknowledges that her methods will need to be repeated in larger, more scientifically stringent studies before they're considered a valid treatment for milk allergies. But the results are promising, she said, and she hopes the treatment might work for other food allergies, too. There already have been some similar studies looking at peanut allergies.
In the meantime, Ludovica seems to be cured. Her father said it's possible she just happened to grow out of her allergy at the same time she was participating in the study. But Ludovica was highly allergic to milk, and therefore not likely to get over the allergy with age.
It's great to no longer have to worry about accidentally eating something with dairy in it, Ludovica said. And now she's finally free to explore all the milk products she never got to taste. So far, though, she's not all that impressed.
"I still have to get used to cheese. I only like one type, which is Gruyere," Ludovica said. "And I also like yogurt. But I guess that's it."
Eight types of food are responsible for up to 90 percent of food allergies in the United States. Those foods are:
Tree nuts (almonds, cashews and walnuts, etc.)
Source: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
E-mail Erin Allday at firstname.lastname@example.org.