Doctors have taken a hint from homeopathy in searching for a new treatment for peanut allergy.

A team from Duke University Medical Centre and Arkansas Children’s Hospital have been experimenting with very small, carefully controlled daily doses of powdered peanut to children with peanut allergy.

Their results suggest that eliminating peanuts from the diet of those allergic to the nuts or using antihistamine drugs to control the reaction may soon become a thing of the past.

Using the principal of "like with like" and small doses, the doctors  began giving the children as little as one thousandth of a single peanut daily and gradually increased the dose. 

After several months the children were able to consume up to 15 peanuts a day before an adverse reaction set in.The children have been continuing the daily therapy and are being closely monitored.

The researchers concentrated on levels of immunoglobulin E (IgE) – a protein the body makes in response to peanut allergens.Children in the study typically had IgE levels greater than 25 but these levels dropped  to less than 2 by the end of the study, according to Dr. Wesley Burks, chief of the Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at Duke.

Despite these promising results, the doctors caution that more research needs to be done to ensure that the changes resulted from a true immune response and that the children did not simply outgrow their allergies.

Their findings have been reported to a recent meeting of the American Academy of Asthma and Immunology in Washington.