A study led by Johns Hopkins Children’s Center shows omalizumab — an injectable, Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved medication for treating asthma and other allergic conditions — substantially reduced potentially life-threatening reactions in patients with an allergy to peanut and other common food allergies.
A report on the first stage of a three-stage study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was published on February 25 in The New England Journal of Medicine and presented during a late breaking symposium at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The FDA recently approved omalizumab for treatment of multiple food allergies following an interim analysis based on this study.
In the study, investigators compared the effects of 16–20 weeks of omalizumab injections with placebo injections in 180 participants ranging from age 1 to 55 with a history of peanut allergy and at least two other food allergies. The subjects were randomly assigned to receive omalizumab or placebo. All but three of the participants were age 17 or younger...
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