ATLANTA – Oral immunotherapy with wheat gluten flour decreased wheat reactions in some allergic patients, according to a trial reported at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology.
Wheat allergy is fairly common in young children; most people outgrow it. For some, though, it remains a dangerous problem, especially because wheat is almost impossible to avoid, said senior investigator Hugh Sampson, MD, the Kurt Hirschhorn Professor of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York.
For example, one of the study subjects stopped for a bite on the way to the clinic. “He thought he ate a wheat-free breakfast but ended up arriving with anaphylaxis,” the physician said.
Dr. Hugh Sampson
Gluten is the protein-rich allergenic part of wheat; using gluten flour instead of regular flour allowed for smaller, more convenient doses. It was sprinkled over applesauce and other foods. Twelve of the 23 gluten flour subjects (52%), but no one in the placebo group, tolerated a challenge of 4,443 mg at 1 year.
Next, placebo subjects were started on their own gluten flour regimen, but they shot for a higher maximum dose of 3,870 mg/day. The original gluten group stayed on their dose, a maximum of 1,445 mg/day.
The higher dose was more effective at 2-year follow-up; 7 of 23 patients (30%) in the 1,445-mg group tolerated a challenge of 7,443 mg at 2 years, versus 12 of 21 patients (57%) in the 3,870-mg group.
Just over 10% of the doses triggered adverse reactions. Most of the reactions were mild – itching in the throat or mouth, nausea, and the like – but epinephrine was needed after 0.05% of the doses. The adverse reaction rate was similar to that with other forms of oral immunotherapy, and there were no statistically significant differences in the number of reactions between the low- and high-dose gluten groups.
For anyone who reads the study and thinks about running to the grocery store for gluten flour, Dr. Sampson cautioned against it. There’s no Food and Drug Administration–approved product, and, more importantly, “you can run into [serious medical] problems” if, for instance, immunotherapy triggers anaphylaxis with too much exercise afterward.
The study “has nothing to do with” the kind of gluten intolerance that’s led to an explosion in gluten-free products in recent years, he said. “Our study was directed at IgE-mediated reactions. Celiac disease has a very different mechanism.”
Also, only a few people remained tolerant after being backed off wheat immunotherapy for a couple of months. There’s no such thing as a cure for food allergies at this point.
“We are trying to get people into remission. Nobody yet has demonstrated that you can make a permanent change in somebody [who] is hypersensitive, even to a bee sting,” Dr. Sampson said.
The study results are big enough to protect wheat-allergic people from accidental exposure. In the case of the study subject who reacted to wheat in his breakfast, he probably reacted to far less than 7,443 mg of wheat protein – about the amount in a plate of pasta – before immunotherapy. No one with a wheat allergy is intentionally going to order something like that, Dr. Sampson said.
The next step is industry funding for a larger trial. “These studies are expensive, and we hope somebody will take up the torch. We have to get industry involved,” he said.
Private philanthropies funded the work. Dr. Sampson is chief scientific officer for DBV Technologies, a company developing a patch for peanut allergies.