Study to reduce infants’ life-threatening food allergies at risk due to federal cuts | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

A clinical trial aimed at reducing the likelihood of near-fatal food allergies among 800 infants is one of the many studies at risk of ending because of Trump administration cuts to federal research funding, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Kari Nadeau.

“When this type of clinical trial is ended … you put patients’ lives at risk and you put their safety at risk,” said Nadeau, John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies, chair of the Department of Environmental Health, and principal investigator for the study, in a May 29 CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour.

Nadeau’s study uses a new clinical strategy for preventing food allergies—proactively treating babies with skin conditions predictive of peanut allergy. It began in 2020 and was supposed to run for seven years, she said. Although federal funding for the study has been cut, if it were reinstated in the next few months, she and her colleagues would be able to continue their work.

Federal funding cuts—about $3 billion across Harvard, including $200 million at Harvard Chan School—“has really been a terrible hit to Harvard, but in the end who’s really hurting are the American people, unfortunately,” Nadeau told Amanpour. “And this has been a problem not just at our university, but many others. Because when you degrade science … you also degrade the health of the American people and [people around] the globe.”

Watch the CNN clip: How NIH funding cuts are hitting kids with near-fatal allergies, according to this doctor


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