“We don’t have to live in fear anymore.”

That’s the common refrain from hundreds of parents of preschoolers with peanut allergy that my colleagues and I have successfully treated with peanut “oral immunotherapy” over the past two years.

Oral immunotherapy (OIT) is a treatment in which a patient consumes small amounts of an allergenic food, such as peanut, with the dose gradually increased to a target maximum (or maintenance) amount. The goal for most parents is to achieve desensitization — so their child can ingest more of the food without triggering a dangerous reaction, protecting them against accidental exposure.