Food allergies are something of a 21st century hazard, having become much more prevalent in recent years. The wide variety of foods involved (egg, cod, shrimp, scallops, peanuts, cow’s milk, crab, lobster) lends added urgency to finding a solution to this issue. Click here, and you’ll see what one French company has been doing to address this burning question.
DBV-Technologies is placing particular emphasis on allergy-specific solutions, meaning that it’s been delving into techniques for dealing with peanut, cow’s milk and dust mite allergies. It has developed a common approach to these widespread allergies, centring around an adhesive patch called Viaskin®. http://www.dbv-technologies.com/technology/viaskin-technology/ gives you a good overview of the thinking behind this technique, but it’s really relatively simple. The substance that causes the allergic reaction (the antigen) is delivered to the patient’s immune system via a skin patch which contains this antigen in powder form. The exact dosage of the antigens can be varied as desired. The whole process is entirely painless and at no stage is the blood-skin barrier broken. Basically, through the delivery of these antigens to the immune system, the body becomes desensitized to them over time, hopefully up to the point where the risk of severe allergic reactions being triggered disappears entirely…