In the craziness of moving, preparing for Easter and our trip to the beach (where I'm writing this post), I almost forgot to tell everyone about my latest call with Abigail's doctor at Duke. Now that Abigail is on the maintenance dose, we only have to drive to the Duke Clinical Trial Unit every 6 months for lab work. In between those visits, the doctor calls to check in to see how she is doing, and to see if there are any issues or concerns. I had not heard her IgE lab results from our January trip to Durham so I was anxious to find out what her new numbers were.
Her IgE number is in the single digits! That's incredible! Our goal is to get her number to 2 by the end of the study. We are on our way. Her number is now 9.28. With a year still to get there, I quote our doctor, "Abigail has a really good chance of kicking this thing."
Her IgE numbers are following the pattern that they are seeing with the other clinical trial participants. When Abigail was 18 months old, her number was in the 14 range. When she entered the study at age 7, her number was 10.4. During the study, it spiked to 16.7, then down some to 15.5, then 12.9 and a year and a half into the study she's at 9.28. One of the biggest conclusions the staff at Duke has made is that this process takes time. They increased the sublingual immunotherapy study length by 6 months for a total of 36 months instead of the original 30. They've found that the extra time is getting the numbers that they want to see.
While Abigail's IgE numbers were in the teens to start, Duke is still seeing the same trend with children that start with numbers in the 300's, 800's and even 1000's. The number curve is still the same. The numbers spike and then drop along the same curve. I have a friend whose daughter's IgE number was in the 300 range, spiked up over 500, but is now in the 50 range. It sounds like a long way to go to get to 2, but her percentage change is in line with Abigail's. Her daughter is just seeing the drastic changes while Abigail's change of 2 to 2 1/2 points is equally a big deal.
Bottom line...it's working! We are so blessed. You guys hang in there too. The latest trial that Duke is doing now is administering the peanut protein via a patch. I really believe doctors are doing everything they can to make this process of desensitization as easy as possible to administer so that it can be done by allergist and doctors beyond those involved in the trials.
