This week I decided to go slightly off topic because of some very recent events that have occurred in my life. As I am writing this blog I am actually sitting in the hospital because of an allergic reaction I just had (and no I’m not making this up, and I did write about a trip to the hospital that happened earlier this year for the same reason in my passion blog, but it did happen again.), so it occurred to me, why not see if there is any connection to genetic modification and allergies. Lo and behold there does seem to be an interesting link between the two.
The connection may not be what you are thinking though. According to The American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, there are at least eight current studies proving that genetically modified foods actually are hypoallergenic when compared to their natural counterparts. Also, according to this source, “the committee did not find a relationship between consumption of GE(genetically engineered) foods and the increase in prevalence of food allergies.” Based on these studies there only seems to be evidence in favor of GMOs as food that can actually be hypoallergenic.
However, to attempt to be as thorough as possible, there were studies done with the assumption that genetically engineered foods were worse and more allergenic than the “normal” option. But, “no studies were identified that demonstrated that direct consumption of a GM food was associated with an increased rate of clinical allergy.” This is not definitive proof of genetically engineered foods being hypoallergenic, but it goes a long way to quell any fears about eating these foods for those with allergies.
I also found something more pertaining directly to me which I was very interested in. I have a peanut allergy, which I never had any trouble with until this year. I guess lots of random people offering me food can be dangerous if I don’t remember to ask if there are peanuts in it.
This abstract for an article I found on PubMed by a research team at Alabama A&M University describes a way in which peanuts can be engineered to lose the gene that is the primary cause for allergic reactions. This to me seems like a huge deal. If scientists are able to target this gene with post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) it would “knock out allergenic proteins,” I would love for this to happen. It would possibly save a good amount of lives around the world, as peanut allergies are becoming more and more common and it is also possible to use this strategy on other foods to gain the same effect.
More recently scientists in Australia have actually found a possible way to “turn off” the body’s allergic response through gene therapy. This works because our bodies when they have allergic reactions mistake certain foods or cells as “bad” and try to our bodies down to prevent them from getting farther into us. In reality though, these foods are harmless and by basically disarming our body’s alarm system the allergic reaction and side effects that come with it, like anaphylaxis can be prevented. And the importance of this cannot really be understate for someone like myself who’s had anaphylactic reactions at least twice. Typically, each reaction is worse than the last, so I need to be extra careful that I don’t eat peanuts again and wind up dead.
According to this article, these studies that used gene therapy to stop allergic reaction was done on mice. Hopefully, there is the possibility that these trial move onto humans in the next 2–4 years. Though Professor Adam Custovic from from Imperial College London says not to get our hopes up, “we can cure allergies in mice but we cannot do it in humans” he makes the point that mice and humans are extremely different creatures. The shared similarities give us a starting point to begin to work to correct this issue in humans, but that figure of 2–4 years until a cure is apparently only a hopeful estimate. Though if scientists are successfully able to wipe the “memory” of T-cells to prevent allergic reactions it would allow patients with both allergies and asthma to be cured in as little as one visit to a doctor.
It seems like possible cures for allergies may be only around the bend and hopefully possible in the near future. There is also a great possibility of seeing more genetically engineered foods that are hypoallergenic kind of like how certain dog breeds are. In both instances, the future seems positive for allergy sufferers thanks to advances in genetic modification technology.