Are years of research by DBV-Technologies into food allergies finally starting to pay off?
The DBV Technologies internet site is something of a treasure trove if you’re interested in food allergies. Perhaps these have badly affected your quality of life, or that of a loved one and you’d like to find out what can be done to improve this situation?
Source : http://www.dbv-technologies.com
Based in the Paris area, this firm has been working for years on ways of treating and diagnosing some of the most common food allergies. On their dedicated ‘peanut’ section http://www.dbv-technologies.com/en/viaskin-products/viaskin-peanut you can see some quite frightening statistics on the spread of peanut allergy in the United States and the United Kingdom. In fact, allergies have generally become more prevalent in recent years right across the developed world.
It may look like something of an unlikely rescuer, but the firm has created a patch, currently being tested, that works by releasing very small quantities of antigens into the body of the allergy sufferer. Called immunotherapy, this ‘tolerization’ approach is not new, but the patch application method is. Known as epicutaneous immunotherapy, it offers many potential safety benefits compared with injection-based treatments. The so-called Viaskin patch is shown below.