Parents of girl who died after eating Pret baguette launch food allergen study

The parents of a teenager who died from an allergic reaction to a Pret A Manger baguette have set up a £2.2m clinical trial aiming to improve treatment of allergies.

The study, which is backed by food businesses including Leon, Elior UK and Burger King UK, will examine whether commonly available peanut and milk products can be used to as an alternative to expensive pharmaceutical drugs to ‘desensitise’ patients with allergies.

If successful, it could mean people with food allergies would no longer have to avoid popular foods such as cakes, curries, and pizza.

Tanya and Nadim Ednan-Laperouse’s 15-year-old daughter Natasha died in 2016 after she suffered an allergic reaction to a Pret A Manger baguette containing sesame. At an inquest into her death a coroner described Pret’s allergen labelling as “inadequate”.

The couple successfully campaigned for the introduction of Natasha’s Law in October, which requires all ingredients and allergens to be listed on food made on-site and pre-packed for direct sale.

The three-year oral immunotherapy trial will be the first major study funded by the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, which was set up by the Ednan-Laperouse family following Natasha’s death.

Nadim said: “This is a major first-step in our mission to ‘make food allergies history’. The aim is to save lives and prevent serious hospitalisations by offering lifelong protection against severe allergic reactions to eventually any number of foods or ingredients.

“The study aims to plug the current oral immunotherapy research gap by proving that ‘everyday foods’ rather than pharmaceutical drugs can be used as a practical treatment for children and young adults with allergies.”

The trial will be led by researchers at the University of Southampton partnering with Imperial College London and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Newcastle University, and Sheffield Children’s Hospital.

It will recruit 216 people between the ages of three and 23 with a food allergy to cow’s milk and aged between six and 23 with food allergy to peanuts. Following an initial 12 months of desensitisation, carried out under medical supervision, participants will be monitored for a further two years.

Dr Paul Turner, reader in paediatric allergy and clinical immunology at Imperial College London, said: “This study heralds a new-era for the active treatment of food allergy. For too long, we have told people just to avoid the food they are allergic to – that is not a treatment, and food-allergic people and their families deserve better.”

Other food businesses that have backed the research include Greggs, Tesco, Just Eat, Co-op Morrisons, KFC, Bakkavor, Sainsbury’s, Bidfood, Costa Coffee, Pret A Manger, Lidl, Cooplands and Uber Eats.