Woman Develops Peanut Allergy After Lung Transplant

An anonymous reader writes "A woman in need of a lung transplant got her new lungs from someone with a peanut allergy who died of anaphylactic shock. Seven months after the surgery, the woman was at an organ transplant support group when she ate a peanut butter cookie and had a violent allergic reaction. So how had the woman's new lungs brought along a peanut allergy? A blog post dives into the medical details and explains that immune cells in the donated lungs couldn't have lived in the new body for long enough to cause the reaction... however, if they encountered an allergen (i.e. something peanuty) shortly after being transplanted, they could have trained the woman's native immune cells to respond."

Idle?

[emkyooess]

I wouldn't call this an "idle" article. It's more of a real article that some of them lately.

Prices to pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Developing an allergy like that has got to be pretty annoying, but if I had to choose, I'd still prefer new lungs and an allergy over no allergy but no lungs either.

Transplant drugs?

[vlm]

I believe if you get a lung transplant you get to take immunosuppresive drugs for life. So, she's on a heavy diet of drugs that deeply mess with her immune system, her immune system malfunctions, therefore it must be some mystical connection to a dead person.

If you hear hooves, think horse not zebra.

Re:Transplant drugs?

[UnknowingFool]

It was my understanding that allergies are an over-reaction of the immune system. People without allergies have immune systems that have minimal responses. I would have thought that the transplant drugs would function the same as allergy medication in that they dampen the response.

pea-nutty holocaust has no basis in science.

[xeno]

Sigh. Great, now the pea-nutty people have more ammo for declaring nut-free zones (from which they do not remove themselves, ironically) in schools, camps, clubs, etc etc.

Meanwhile, in the real world.... Around a hundred people die from all food allergies combined in the US each year. Yet thousands of parents and related busybodies haul children off to alergists, and when they're told a "detectable response" exists, they start shrieking about anaphalactic shock and the deadly threat of peanuts, and buy another box of Epi-Pens.

Nonsense. Complete, utter illogical reality-distorting nonsense. The pea-nutty holocaust has no basis in science. The *only* semi-scientific numbers indicating a spike in peanut allergy incidence was a commercial report sponsored by an Epi-Pen manufacturer several years ago with dubious data sources.

According to the CDC (which employs actual scientists, I'm told), the deadly threat from peanut allergies affects about 1 in 30 Million people. Deadly allergic reactions to fish and fish oils are more than TWICE as prevalent as peanut allergies. Yet fish sticks are served in school cafeterias, hippie daycare providers happily much on boxed sushi with bare hands, and gramma still makes tuna sandwiches... without an epidemic of people dropping dead.

I'm sad that this gets press, not because single real events aren't tragic. I'm sad because my kids have to suffer thru more of the secondary effects: an ongoing flood of hysterical peanut hypochondria.