Author: Carlyn Kolker
Date Published: October 14, 2014
Link: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/my-son-the-live-peanut-allergy-science-experiment/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Summary:
In New York,
five year old Caleb has a harmful peanut allergy that could kill him if he eats
peanuts. When Caleb ingests peanuts, he can have an immediate allergic
reaction, called anaphylaxis that causes hives, swelling, and contraction of
the lungs, resulting in a difficulty to breathe. However, Mount Sinai Medical
Center is conducting a clinical trial with a purpose to test a possible
treatment for harsh peanut allergies. The treatment is to put the child near
small enough amounts of peanut flour so that s/he can handle it, and increase
the amount of flour gradually. Each child is either given actual peanut flour
or brown flour, a placebo. The goal is to get the child to not have a reaction
from the equivalent of a few peanuts in a few months, which turns out to happen
to Caleb who is able to tolerate about 10 times the amount of peanuts than he
could have at the start of the trial.
Connection:
This relates to our topic on hypothesis-based science. The
scientists had a hypothesis that, gradually increasing the dosage of peanut
flour, would give the child a certain tolerance to peanuts. The team then
created an experiment with an independent variable, a dependent variable,
controlled variables, and results of quantitative data. The independent
variable is the increasing amount of peanut flour given throughout the
experiment. The dependent variable is how the children react to the flour such
as do they display an increase in tolerance, do they have a severe reaction to
it, etc. Some controlled variables are the age range of the subjects of the
experiment in that they’re all children, and the mentality of the children
because they don’t know if they’re given the peanut flour or the brown flour.
Lastly, the experiment produced quantitative data like Caleb having no reaction
to the equivalent of 10 times the amount of peanuts he could
have had at the beginning of the experiment, due to a measured increase
in amount of peanut flour over time.
So, the some of the pediatric allergies are caused by psychological disorder?
ReplyDeleteI don't know specifically if some pediatric allergies are caused by psychological disorders, but I will elaborate on the placebo. The scientists use a placebo because they want to compare the results of the experiment with the gradually increasing peanut flour to the experiment with the brown flour. Since all of the children don't know whether they've been given the peanut flour or not, they will live their lives normally. As a result, scientists can compare the results of the children given the peanut flour to the children given the brown flour, and know that if there were any differences, it was only because of the peanut flour.
DeleteA link that helped me was http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/what-is-the-placebo-effect.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletewas this experiment ever repeated with other people who have peanut allergies?
ReplyDeleteYes, the experiment had lots of participants, but Caleb was just an example for this article.
DeleteCan this treatment work with other allergies?
ReplyDeleteYes, it can work for some allergies such as allergic asthma, eye allergies, and stinging insect allergies. There's something called allergen immunotherapy, or allergy shots, in which the patient is given gradually increasing dosages of their particular allergen, and over time their body gets an immunity for that allergy. Building up the immunity to the allergy can take up to one to one and a half years, and like any treatment, it doesn't fully work on everybody.
DeleteA link that helped me was http://www.aaaai.org/conditions-and-treatments/treatments/allergy-shots-(immunotherapy).aspx
Sorry for the weird spacing at the end. I don't know what happened there.
Delete