CLEVELAND — Peanut allergies can be a life-altering condition, but thanks to the Cleveland Clinic, families might not have to suffer much longer. 

What You Need To Know

  • Peanut allergies affect one in 13 children

  • A new Cleveland Clinic study shows an innovative treatment has been proven to reduce sensitivity to peanuts in babies

  • It's called peanut oral immunotherapy

When Colleen McNatt is preparing 1/32nd of a teaspoon of peanut butter to give to her 1-year-old son, Vincent, she said she makes sure it's pretty accurate.

Vincent has a peanut allergy, which affects up to one in 13 children. 

“So I usually mix it with a little something because it is a little bit more volume of peanut butter now, so I usually like to mix it just to make sure it gets down," she said.

While it may seem counter-intuitive to give peanut-butter to a baby who’s allergic, McNatt is doing this all under the care and direction of doctors at the Cleveland Clinic.

It’s called peanut oral immunotherapy. 

"You know after we give the dose, we are just kind of watching him for two hours to make sure he doesn't have any reaction, and we have our EpiPen and everything like that just in case, but honestly he has done really well with this," she said. "We're very happy.” 

Sandra Hong, the director of the Food and Allergy Center of Excellence at the Cleveland Clinic, said one of their new studies shows that this innovative treatment has been proven to reduce sensitivity to peanuts in babies. 

“The quicker that you can actually start taking care of allergies, the better the actual outcome," she said. "So what we have actually noticed is that these little ones rarely will have very severe allergic reactions, but as they get older, you know, in our studies, it looks like 4 and above, they start to actually have more and more severe allergic reactions."

The retrospective study involved 22 infants age 7 to 11 months who received peanut oral immunotherapy at the Cleveland Clinic. 

"They are given tiny amounts, and then they stay on it, and then they come in, in two weeks and we slowly increase the amount," Hong said. "We start at extremely low doses of the peanut, and then we go up to the amount of about two peanut kernels, and then we maintain them on that. What we found in this group is all of our children actually were able to tolerate the two peanuts in their diet, and the study is ongoing, but of the children who actually did go through what’s called ‘the challenge,’ so they were able to tolerate 6 to 9 peanuts during the challenge. Ninety-one percent of them were actually able to pass that.” 

McNatt said at first it was scary to give her baby something he’s allergic too, but now she’s happy they decided to do the therapy. 

“I feel like it going to for sure be a big change in his quality of life, not just for him but his sibling too, and parents,” she said. 

Hong said the long-term goal of this therapy is to eventually eliminate peanut allergies altogether.