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There is a difference between patients who have peanut allergy (PA) and peanut sensitivity (PS). Those who are sensitive tolerate peanut, but have peanut-specific IgE-antibodies which makes them show a positive skin prick test response. Brought et al (2014) conducted a study where they aimed to characterize peanut-specific responses from patients with peanut allergy, peanut sensitivity and atopic children (children who have predisposition toward developing certain allergic hypersensitivity reactions, for example eczema) without peanut allergy. They investigated gene expressions in peanut-activated memory TH subsets (TH memory cells are a kind of cells within the immune system) from the three groups to see if they could identify potential diagnostic biomarkers specific for peanut allergy. Among all differentially expressed genes (which were a total of 12,257) it was IL9 that showed the greatest difference between the patients with peanut allergy and the patients without peanut allergy. The research group also concluded that the IL9 gene showed the highest difference in expression not only between the patients with and without peanut allergy, but also could distinguish the patients with peanut sensitivity.

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The opportunity to distinguish between people who are allergic and those who are sensitive to peanuts gives the sensitive patients the ability to live more normal lives where they do not have to live with all the restrictions that come with peanut allergy.

Reference

Brough, Helen A, David J Cousins, Alina Munteanu, Yuen Fei Wong, Asha Sudra, Kerry Makinson, and Victor Turcanu, et al. 2014. "IL-9 is a key component of memory TH cell peanut-specific responses from children with peanut allergy." The Journal Of Allergy And Clinical Immunology 134, no. 6: 1329-1338.e10. MEDLINE, EBSCOhost (accessed June 13, 2015).