A pair of new papers unlock crucial new insights into what goes on in the body when anaphylaxis occurs, and indicate how an existing asthma medication could one day help prevent these life-threatening allergic reactions
Food allergies suck. Beyond placing onerous limits on your diet, their health impacts can totally derail your life, and scientists have been scrambling for years to try and find better, more lasting treatments for these conditions’ worst effects. Now, a pair of papers published today in the journal Science unlock crucial new insights into what goes on in the body when anaphylaxis occurs and indicate how an existing medication could one day help prevent these life-threatening allergic reactions.
In one paper, a team of scientists reveal evidence in lab mice for a previously unknown pathway in the gut that may be responsible for some food allergy symptoms. And in the second paper, another team demonstrates that an asthma drug called zileuton blocks a crucial aspect of this pathway in mice, seemingly preventing the expected allergic reactions from happening in most cases. The researchers are now launching a clinical trial to test whether zileuton can pull off the same trick in people.
“If so, this could provide a treatment to prevent anaphylaxis,” Adam James Williams and Stephanie Eisenbarth, both immunologists at Northwestern University who are co-authors on the second paper, told Gizmodo in an email.
