A "Cure" for Food Allergies? Not Yet.

If you get a Sunday newspaper, you probably noticed an interesting Parade magazine cover story with the somewhat misleading title "What You Can Do About Food Allergies." While the article profiles two families and includes a small sidebar about allergy testing, medication, and lifestyle issues, the centerpiece of the story was a glowing writeup of research on food desensitization coming out of the Duke Food Allergy Initiative. This is promising research, but as the article notes, it reflects only small pilot studies, and one researcher the story quotes suggests five years as a realistic time frame for coming up with workable allergy treatments beyond avoidance. Nonetheless, it's nice to see allergic families portrayed as responsible rather than hysterical in the national media, and especially nice to see media coverage given to promising new therapies.