OIT (Oral Immunotherapy) for Peanut Allergy

I highly recommend OIT for your peanut allergic child. We are currently seeing AAMG to further desensitize our son to peanuts and other nuts. We went to the Sean Parker Center at Stanford for the initial OIT. It was well worth the driving to and from appointments. Our son can now eat one whole peanut without reaction and it has transformed our lives. While he continues to avoid all nuts and carry an Epipen, we no longer have to be totally on guard all the time. He can eat foods fried in peanut oil, as well as food that is manufactured in a facility or equipment that processes peanuts since cross contamination is not as big a concern as it used to be. I don't think I was aware of the daily stress his peanut allergy caused me until OIT relieved some of it.

I am curious about this therapy as well. Would you mind sharing any feedback you receive with me? My daughter has a sever peanut allergy. Thank you!

Hi, my two kids are AAMG patients currently doing OIT (peanut for one kid, cashew/egg/dairy for the other), we started last summer.  Every other week we drive from Berkeley to San Ramon.  We feel super lucky that we have the opportunity to be doing OIT.  My kids are currently cleared for nut cross-contamination, which means accidental exposures won't result in epi or the ICU (which has happened to us).  As practical matter, this this past Halloween was the first time my seven-year-old was able to eat Kit Kats, Twix and M&Ms.  And I didn't have to worry!  The freedom is amazing and an unbelievable relief.  We did a year of peanut SLIT with my daughter (in Berkeley) before starting OIT, so she was able to start her OIT at a fairly high dose.  She is currently up to four peanuts (!) but we are continuing to updose because she would like to be able to eat peanut butter someday, and because my son (who wants to eat all his allergens as well) has a ways to go with egg and milk, though he's currently up to 1.5 cashews.  But if we just wanted protection from nut cross-contamination, we could be in maintenance at this point (i.e., no more visits to the allergist). 

But there are downsides of OIT.  The drive to San Ramon is rough -the appointments are about 1.5 hours, so either your kids miss tons of school or you hit massive traffic, no way around it - we leave Berkeley around 2 on Wednesdays and get home around 6.  Until you get on "real" food (basically, when the amounts are so small they need to be weighed out), you get powders from AAMG's dietician and the cost isn't covered by insurance.  You also need to have a 2.5-3 hour "window" for daily dosing: predosing with zyrtec, dosing with the allergen, then a "rest period" of a couple hours where vigorous activity isn't allowed but your kid has to be awake.  It is doable, but it really adds to the already-complicated planning matrix that exists when you have kids.  Mine are young (5 and 7) and not involved in serious sports activities or anything like that, but I'm not sure how we'd do it if they were.  Finally, I would ask if your child is interested in doing OIT.  If they are super resistant (fearful or picky), I think it would be really hard.  You have to dose daily, and to have it be a daily battle might be a dealbreaker for me. 

But if you can swing it, I would highly recommend it.  OIT offers so much freedom and peace of mind.