Peanut allergies: skin patch for toddlers shows promise in trials

Researchers are hopeful that a small skin patch placed between the shoulders will help combat peanut allergies in young children.

According to a study published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine, the “peanut patch” outperformed a placebo in “desensitizing children to peanuts and increasing the peanut dose that triggered allergic symptoms”.

The trial involved 362 children with peanut allergies from ages one to three in eight countries, including the US, Canada and Australia.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Toddlers wore a patch containing a tiny amount of a peanut protein – 250 micrograms or “about 1/1000th of a peanut” – or a placebo patch between their shoulder blades every day for a year, explained The Washington Post.

Two-thirds of the children who wore the patch, called Viaskin, “were able to tolerate a higher amount of peanut protein at the end of the year”, although a third of the placebo group was also able to “tolerate higher amounts” of peanut protein, as some children “outgrow” their allergy.

It is hoped the patch could be a “useful tool” to defend toddlers against “life-threatening accidental consumption or exposure in areas such as cafeterias and playgrounds”. Peanut allergies are one of the “most common among children” – and there is no cure.

As Science noted, oral treatments are available to treat peanut allergies. Other studies have shown that “eating microdoses of peanut protein can treat the allergies”, but this is the “first large trial to report outcomes with a skin patch”. The patch appeared to have “fewer side effects than oral therapy”, said the science news site, but was also “somewhat less effective”.

There were also several limitations to the study, noted the Post, including the exclusion of children with “severe” peanut allergies due to safety concerns, as well as a lack of diversity in the study. Only one Black child was included in each group – the study said the lack of diversity was “consistent with other food-allergy treatment studies”.