In the Works: Immunotherapy for food allergies
Caroline Cooper will pack her bags and head off for college this fall secure in the knowledge that she’ll be able to safely eat anything the cafeteria dishes up.
Her mother, Heather Cooper, meanwhile, will not have to worry that Caroline, 17, will go into anaphylactic shock while alone in the dorm.
This is notable because from the time she was 11 months old until this past spring, Caroline Cooper was severely allergic to milk — a bit of cheese or yogurt could have killed her. But early last year, the teenager began a type of immunotherapy, eating minute but gradually increasing amounts of milk protein. In March she tasted her first bite of ice cream, the same day she was accepted in the honors business program at the University of Texas at Austin.
