Research presented Sunday at a meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in Washington, raises hope that children suffering from peanut allergies may soon benefit from a treatment that will probably make their allergies disappear.

To be more specific, a carefully administered daily dose of peanuts may help children with peanut allergies greatly increase their tolerance to the food, doctors at Duke University Medical Center and Arkansas Children’s Hospital reported at the meeting.

“It appears these children have lost their allergies. This gives other parents and children hope that we’ll soon have a safe, effective treatment that will halt allergies to certain foods,” said Wesley Burks, MD, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at Duke.

Tests performed on 18 children with peanut allergies showed that their bodies built tolerance quickly. More exactly, at the beginning of the study, the participants couldn’t tolerate one-sixth of a peanut. After six months, however, they were ingesting 13 to 15 peanuts before they had a reaction, Burks said.

He added that far more study is needed before the treatment can be used by all children with peanut allergies. The researchers now plan to enroll at least 80 children in the next few years to compare the treatment to the placebo.

About 12 million Americans suffer from food allergies, including about 2.2 million children. Of them, about 3.3 million people are allergic to peanuts or tree nuts. Food allergies can be alleviated with drugs, but there are no approved treatments for food allergies.

According to the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, a health advocacy organization based in Fairfax, Va., about 200 people die every year in the United States because allergic reactions at something they ate and almost a third of the U.S.’s people, (meaning 1.8 million Americans) with peanut allergies have reactions severe enough to kill them.