Study merits larger numbers
“Among the 36 who completed the 3 years of therapy, the authors report significant rates of desensitization among treated children compared with those receiving placebo. Furthermore, this effect was persistent for at least 3 months after stopping therapy in a subgroup of the children,” said Leonard B. Bacharier, MD, director of the Center for Pediatric Asthma, Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, Nashville, Tenn.
“Overall, these findings suggest the promise of peanut SLIT, which should be studied in larger numbers of preschool children,” Dr. Bacharier, who was not part of the study, said in an interview.
Jonathan A. Bernstein, MD, professor of medicine, University of Cincinnati, agreed.
“It’s a well-designed study, it’s small, but it’s promising,” Dr. Bernstein, who was not involved with the study, said in an interview.
“They did show that most of the patients who got the sublingual therapy were able to get to the target dose and develop tolerance, so I think it’s promising. We know that this stuff works. This is just more data from a well-controlled study in a younger population,” he said.
“We do OIT [oral immunotherapy] and sublingual but we don’t do it in such young children in our practice. The youngest is 3 years old, because they have to understand what is going on and cooperate. If they don’t cooperate it’s not possible.”
Dr. Kim reported financial relationships with DBV Technologies, Kenota Health, Ukko, Aimmune Therapeutics, ALK, AllerGenis, Belhaven Pharma, Duke Clinical Research Institute, Nutricia, NIH/NIAID, NIH/NCCIH, NIH/Immune Tolerance Network, FARE, and the Wallace Foundation. Dr. Bacharier and Dr. Bernstein have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.