Sage Coetsee: Perth kids part of growing cohort in remission from peanut allergies

Not many six-year-olds can say they have been prescribed lollies by a doctor, but for Sage Coetsee having two – or three – peanut butter M&Ms every night is a mandatory part of her treatment. And for Alexa Coetsee, the mum-of-two could never have imagined that would be possible for her daughter after Sage suffered a bad case of anaphylaxis as a baby, leading to her being diagnosed with a peanut allergy. “She first experienced anaphylaxis as an eight-month-old, which was definitely the worst day of my life,” Mrs Coetsee said. “She went into anaphylaxis in her car seat as we drove over the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne (and) she was purple when I pulled her out.” Sage is part of a growing cohort of children who are now facing a reality where severe anaphylactic reactions to peanuts are a thing of the past. The six-year-old took part in the Early Peanut Immunotherapy in Children (EPIC) study through Perth Children’s Hospital which used oral immunotherapy to desensitise a group of pre-schoolers with peanut allergies. After a year of treatment with growing “doses” of the allergen, she now has her nightly treat to ensure she remains tolerant to exposures. This week a new standardised model of care using that same process was rolled out across the country to bring the treatment into mainstream medical practice. And while oral immunotherapy has been available in clinical trials and some specialist allergy centres around the world for the last decade or so, this is the first time it has ever been adopted as a national model of care. Perth Children’s Hospital Immunology consultant Dr Michael O’Sullivan said while there had been hesitations in the Australian medical community in the past about whether going through oral immunotherapy was better overall than for sufferers to just continue to avoid peanuts, he said the EPIC study showed it was. “All of the resources we produced, and all of the information sheets and experience we had was what we brought to the national collaboration to develop this model”, Dr O’Sullivan said. “What we are just now finding with the results is that the overall quality of life of people who received immunotherapy was better than those who didn’t, so despite the time and effort families had to put in, at the end of the process their quality of life was better.” It comes as it was announced this week that 10 paediatric hospitals across the country — including PCH and Fiona Stanley Hospital — had partnered with the National Allergy Centre of Excellence to introduce a program to help children build a tolerance to the allergen and hopefully achieve remission — a game changer for Mrs Coetsee. “Only people who have a child with anaphylaxis, or who have it themselves, understand how stressful it is trying to control something you can’t control,” she said. “Now (we don’t) have to worry, we can go somewhere and we can get an ice cream and it doesn’t matter if the scoop has touched peanut ice cream.”