VITESSE trial of epicutaneous (patch, in other words) immunotherapy for peanut allergy has reported successful results – this is the largest food immunotherapy trial ever performed, across US, Canada, Europe and Australia.
Results have not been formally presented or published yet.
This is a commercial product, called Viaskin. 654 patients between the ages of 4 and 7 years were involved.
At 1 year, 46.6% of children treated with the Viaskin peanut patch achieved the end goal of passing a 300mg challenge (1.5 peanuts) if low threshold at the start, or else 600mg challenge if high starting threshold (100mg or higher). This is a much lower success rate than found with oral peanut (Palforzia).
Less adverse effects though – only 3.2% of patients discontinued treatment due to adverse events. There were no reports of treatment-related serious adverse events. Treatment-related anaphylaxis occurred in 0.5% of treated children (2), and both participants continued therapy.
So this might be appealing to families who are worred about side effects of treatment or patients who have struggled with taking oral doses of peanut because of the taste.
It would be nice to know the cost, what it’s like to wear the patch, whether there are restrictions on activities such as exercise, as there are with Palforzia.
