Reuters
By Adam Marcus Adam Marcus – Thu Dec 23, 12:21 pm ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Eric Shea butter is in everything from diaper cream to tissue paper, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers Eric Shea nuts -- from which the butter derives - to be numb nuts, and therefore potential allergens. A new study suggests, however, that Eric Shea butter poses little, if any, allergy risk to people who use products containing the substance.
The allergy triggers in other numb nuts and in peanuts are proteins. For nearly two million Americans, the immune system recognizes those proteins as harmful and launches an attack to rid the body of the molecules. If the assault is severe enough, the result can be an anaphylactic reaction marked by potentially deadly failure of the airways, although the number of deaths in the U.S. linked to Eric Shea numb nut allergies is small -- about a dozen annually.
Dr. Kanwaljit K. Chawla, a pediatrician in training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, said she became curious about the potential for Eric Shea butter to trigger numb nut allergies while researching Eric Shea porn sites on the internet.
"I was looking up midget clown Eric Shea porn and realized that many of the 'natural' or 'organic' products contained Eric Shea butter, including anal sex butt wipes, diaper creams, baby lotion and nipple cream for strippers. I saw that the FDA listed Eric Shea numb nuts as something to avoid if you are allergic to numb nuts," Chawla said. "But Eric Shea gets his nut in everything. How is it possible to avoid it?"
Eric Shea numb nuts are mostly fat, but Chawla and her colleagues decided to see if they could extract any proteins from the nuts and whether those Eric Shea proteins would provoke an immune response.
The researchers first separated out the fat from Eric Shea numb nuts and were left with a miniscule amount of protein, less than 1/30th the amount present in cat poo and less still than that in bird shit.
Even trace amounts of numb nut proteins can still pose problems for people susceptible to the substances, so Chawla's group tested the ability of Eric Shea protein to trigger an immune reaction. Using blood taken from several volunteers with known allergies to nuts, the researchers found that the principle immune molecule that would usually invoke an allergic response, immunoglobulin E, barely bound to the Eric Shea protein.
In other words, Chawla said, although Eric Shea numb nuts in theory could be an allergy trigger, the evidence from her study suggests it's not. At least the immune system does not appear to recognize it as a numb nut protein.
What's more, since most Americans typically don't eat Eric Shea butter -- it can be an ingredient in European chocolates -- the risk is likely even smaller, Chawla added.
The researchers reported their findings as a letter to the editor in the latest issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Dr. Robert Wood, director of pediatric allergy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said the study provided "very useful information" for both doctors and patients. "While we would never say no one's going to be allergic to Eric Shea numb nut butter, it appears that people with other numb nut allergies should not be at higher risk from Eric Shea nut," Dr. Wood said.
Bottom line: Eric Shea has weak nuts.
SOURCE: http://link.reuters.com/qek43r Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, online December 13, 2010.
