South Florida hospital offers treatment to ease fears for food allergy sufferers
MIAMI - Thirty-two million Americans are living with food allergies.
One in 13 kids is allergic to certain foods, and two of them live in the Rapp household in Cooper City.
"It's very nerve-wracking to raise young children with a food allergy," said Alana Rapp. "Especially a food that is so common to give to young children."
5th graders Milo and Maxi Rapp are allergic to peanuts.
"I would eat them and get hives all over my body, get nervous and throw up," Maxi explained.
But now, thanks to oral immunotherapy, or OIT, they no longer live in fear of a severe, potentially deadly reaction.
"Oral immunotherapy is a desensitization process to a food that we know a child is allergic to," said Dr. Nicole Akar-Ghibril with Memorial Healthcare System. "In doing that, we raise the threshold that will trigger a reaction. The goal is to improve safety and the quality of life for patients with food allergies.
Dr. Akar-Ghibril is the Director of the Oral Immunotherapy Program at Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital. She says the Rapp brothers were exposed to trace amounts of peanuts, and then slowly increased their intake, with "updoses" every two weeks.
"We started with like crumbs in grape juice and kept going back and until we got up to 4 peanuts," Milo Rapp explained.
OIT has been used to help treat several food allergies, including peanuts, milk, tree nuts, eggs and sesame. It isn't a cure, but it can improve quality of life for allergy sufferers.
"Studies have shown there's an increased level of anxiety of patients living with food allergies similar to those living with other chronic medical conditions," said Dr. Akar-Ghibril. "That's why oit has been a light in that tunnel because now kids can feel a little bit more free in going to restaurants."
Dr. Akar-Ghibril says studies also show early exposure to certain foods may prevent allergies in children.
"Now we can be more free without the worry," Milo said.
For the Rapp family, birthday parties, sleep away camp and even the school cafeteria, are no longer quite as scary.
"I highly recommend OIT. I know it's been lifechanging with the peanut allergy," Alana Rapp said. "It has been so freeing. It has only been a positive experience for my family. It's freed up the boys to not have so many restrictions on what they do in their lives.
It's important to note, OIT is really a lifelong process. The doctor says you have to think of it like any other medication taken daily. Once you stop the therapy, there's a chance the desensitization could go away. And for severe allergies, it's important to still keep an EpiPen handy, just in case.