alpha-Gal sensitization via ticks as mediators
is an allergy, albeit a weird one even among food allergies. One problem in differentiation of intolerance from "true" food allergy is the fact that the GI symptoms typical of intolerance
can quite often be observed as a part of the systemic symptoms observed in an IgE-mediated response, too. Just because you have GI symptoms doesn't
have to mean it's an intolerance.
Yes, it's fair to say that my DD is likely to be a pretty extreme case in terms of her low threshold and very severe reaction history... but--
honestly, what I understand from talking to allergy/immunology specialists in the field is that it's not
clear that desensitization
can produce actual "tolerance" that is effectively normal.
If it can't, then that raises concerns re: what happens when other immune challenges are in play-- hormonal shifts or other illness, exposure to environmental allergens, etc. can
all impact threshold dosing. That's not just for people at the low end like my DD.
EVERY one of the studies conducted on OIT-- peanut, milk, egg, etc... and every
method studies (SLIT, OIT, rush/slow/low-level/high-level) have had participants who had to quit the study because of anaphylaxis, and several have had VERY serious problems with this outcome, including near-fatal and even in one instance a fatal outcome. Such studies won't enroll participants like my DD to start with, so they
are more "typical" patients.
This is why, in spite of a handful of clinicians willing to DO oral desensitization... many of the leading researchers (the same ones who were so excited by it 5-8 years back when they were having good results in the short term with their studies) have now backed away from those earlier promising results, and have urged caution in offering desensitizations in regular clinical practice for now, until more is understood about the failure mechanism (which came as a huge surprise) and how to identify patients as "good" or "poor" risks for it.
http://www.aaaai.org/global/latest-...ch/sublingual-or-oral-immunotherapy.aspxhttp://www.asthmaallergieschildren....r-food-allergy-not-ready-for-prime-time/http://www.hopkinschildrens.org/first-long-term-study-of-food-allergy-treatment.aspx
