More hope for OIT in less time?

3/10/2014
Day 290 - Current dose is 1200mg.

For those of us stalking the Stanford studies, there have been some really awesome articles in the news about their progress in the last few weeks.

Let me back up and explain a few things.  OIT == Oral Immunotherapy, essentially you orally ingest your known allergen (food) on a daily basis and very slowly up the dose in an allergist's office.  (So you increase the dose maybe every two weeks).  The Duke/UNC DEVIL study (peanut) is an example of this.  Some allergists will do OIT as an in office therapy, although it is currently not covered by insurance.  It's a breath of hope for those of us with multiple allergens to worry over.  Stanford's SAFAR team has been doing OIT for up to 5 allergens at a time and is pretty much the only place in the country where you can do this simultaneously right now.  When it could take years to desensitize for a single allergen at a time, this is both scary and really hope granting research.  The median time to reach maintenance doses was still long (85 weeks).

Their latest publication talks about using an anti-asthma drug (Xolair) to decrease the amount of time needed to reach maintenance doses.  They were able to do multiple allergens in the new study and reached maintenance levels at a median of 18 WEEKS!  I know it's the first stage, but man… sign us up!!!  Looks like Phase 2 trials began in February.

Articles:
Science Daily
Allergy, Asthma, and Clinical Immunology Journal

So that was the exciting bit - but in other good news - Allergy Eats (app for helping rate/rank restaurants for ability to accommodate food allergies safely), has posted their list of top ranked allergy friendly chain restaurants.  I wasn't going to paste the text but we have a pretty good selection of these in our area so here you go.  We have tended to feel safer at smaller pubs and places we can get to know the staff and owners, but this is handy.

Large (over 200 units):

• Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (4.45 rating)
• P.F. Chang’s China Bistro (4.43 rating)
• Chipotle Mexican Grill (4.41 rating)
• Outback Steakhouse (4.35 rating)
• Romano’s Macaroni Grill (4.20 rating)

Medium (50-200 units):

• Bonefish Grill (4.43 rating)
• Ninety Nine Restaurants (4.28 rating)
• Mellow Mushroom (4.26 rating)
• Uno Chicago Grill (4.24 rating)
• Bertucci’s Brick Oven Restaurant (4.17 rating)

Small (under 50 units):

• Burtons Grill (4.90 rating)
• Maggiano’s Little Italy (4.73 rating)
• Papa Razzi (4.68 rating)
• Legal Sea Foods (4.67 rating)
• Not Your Average Joe’s (4.66 rating)

Until next time…

Alli