Ever since she was an infant, Reagan Roberts could not tolerate being anywhere near cow's milk. A mere sip would leave her vomiting and gasping for breath. If she were even touched by someone with milk on their hands, she would break out in hives and a bright red rash.
"We just had to keep her away from milk," said Reagan's mother, Lissa. "We couldn't have it around the house. At preschool she had to sit by herself. We brought her food to birthday parties. We couldn't go to restaurants."
Today, however, Reagan, 9, of Ellicott City, can drink as much milk as she wants and eat anything.
"She eats ice cream. She eats cheese. She eats yogurt. She drinks chocolate milk. She eats any food anybody else can," Lissa Roberts said. "It's a miracle."
Reagan is one of a small number of children who have undergone an experimental treatment that is showing promise for treating milk, peanut and other food allergies. The approach, known as oral immunotherapy, involves slowly desensitizing the immune system by painstakingly ingesting increasing amounts of whatever triggers the reaction.
"It's pretty encouraging," said Dr. Robert A. Wood, chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins, who led the study that Reagan participated in at the Hopkins Children's Center. "We've still got a long way to go, but I never thought we'd get this far."
Although the approach appears to be highly effective for some children with milk and peanut allergies, the researchers conducting the studies and others caution that much more research is needed to prove and perfect the approach. No one should try the approach on his own, because the treatments can trigger potentially life-threatening reactions.
"It's still very investigational," said Dr. Wesley Burks, chief of the division of pediatric allergy and immunology at Duke University, who has produced promising results in children with peanut allergies.
The strategy is being tested in a handful of small studies in a field that for years showed little progress.
In addition to the oral immunotherapy studies, scientists are in the early stages of testing an experimental suppository, a Chinese herbal remedy and variations of oral immunotherapy that might be safer and more effective.
"There's definitely been a spike in the amount of work going on," said Dr. Hugh A. Sampson, a professor of pediatrics, allergy and immunology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York who leads a federally funded consortium studying food allergies.
