 Australian researchers hail breakthrough after ‘life-changing’ tolerance persists for up to four years 
 
 Australian researchers have made a breakthrough in the treatment of peanut allergy in children. “The way I see it is that we had children who came into the study allergic to peanuts, having to avoid peanuts in their diet, being very vigilant around that, carrying a lot of anxiety with that and, at the end of treatment and even four years later, many of these children who had benefited from our probiotic peanut therapy could now live like a child who didn’t have peanut allergy.” 
 
 The results are published in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. My severe nut allergy Read more 
 
 “These children had been eating peanut freely in their diet without having to follow any particular program of peanut intake in the years after treatment was completed,” said the lead researcher, Prof Mimi Tang. A small clinical trial conducted at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute has led to two-thirds of children treated with an experimental immunotherapy treatment being cured of their allergy. Peanut allergy is the most common cause of anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction, and one of the most common causes of death from food allergy. At the end of the original trial in 2013, 82% of children who received the immunotherapy treatment were deemed tolerant to peanuts compared with just 4% in the placebo group. In a follow-up study four years later, researchers discovered 80 per cent of participants were still cured and showing no signs of allergy. “This is a major step forward in identifying an effective treatment to address the food allergy problem in western societies,” Tang said.
– Could a cure for peanut allergies be close? Australia's ABC reports that in a new study, 82% of participants saw their peanut allergies cured within the first 18 months of treatment. Four years later, 80% of the participants still showed no signs of an allergy, and 70% passed a further test meant to confirm long-term peanut tolerance, the Guardian reports. The research out of Australia's Murdoch Childrens Research Institute involved 48 children, some of whom were given an immunotherapy treatment and some of whom got a placebo. The children who still appeared to be cured four years later "had been eating peanut freely in their diet without having to follow any particular program of peanut intake," says Mimi Tang, the lead researcher. Tang, an immunologist and allergist, combined a probiotic with a method known as peanut oral immunotherapy—a high dose of the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus was combined with peanut protein in increasing amounts. The probiotic is known to calm the immune system and reduce allergic reactions; the idea is to "reprogram" the way the immune system reacts to peanut intake, Tang explains. She hopes to have a product to market within five years, the Age reports. "For the first time, we could have products on the market that provide meaningful and long-lasting treatment benefits, which allow sufferers to eat peanut products without thinking about it, as part of a regular diet," says the CEO of a biotech firm working on a treatment doctors will be able to prescribe, per 9News. (Here's when and how you should feed your baby peanuts.)