PEANUT PROOF

Remarkable new treatments can free millions of kids and adults from the deadly threat of peanut allergy, tackling one of our fastest-growing medical problems

- MARYN MCKENNA

ANABELLE TERRY, A SLENDER, self-possessed 13-year-old, has heard the peanut butter story her entire life. At two and a half she ate nuts for the first time. Her mother, Victoria, had made a little treat: popcorn drizzled with melted caramel, chocolate and peanut butter. Anabelle gobbled it down. "And afterward, I felt really sick," she says. A few minutes later she vomited on the kitchen floor.

There was more trouble ahead. A visit to an allergist confirmed that Anabelle was severely allergic to the peanut butter in the dessert, as well as to most other nuts. It began a life upheaval familiar to families of kids with allergies: learning to decode labels, to carry an EpiPen, and to interrogate friends and their parents about the ingredients in a birthday cake.

Every once in a while, there would be a slip-up. It might be a snack that someone hadn't scrutinized or a food package that didn't list all potential allergens.

And every time, Anabelle's reactions got worse. Although she was just a schoolkid, she had to stay alert. "Eating lunch, all my friends would have PB&Js. And I'd be like, I'm going to sit a little bit farther away," she recalls. "And going over to friends' houses after school, we always had to make sure: 'Hey, would you mind making a nut-free meal?"" Most of that caution is in Anabelle's past now.

For the vast majority of patients, peanut allergy is an unpredictable, lifelong affliction. But thanks to a clinical trial that Anabelle entered when she was nine, she can now tolerate peanuts and tree nuts well enough to feel safe every day. The drug she received in that trial was approved for treating food allergies by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year, making it the second food allergy remedy to earn the agency's blessing since 2020.