Health Personal Measures

People who are suffering from allergic asthma, rhinitis, conjunctivitis, and stinging insect allergies should be considered the appropriate candidates to be given a treatment based on the ‘immunotherapy’. This therapy is also known as the “allergy shots”.

Immunotherapy or the ‘allergy shots’ is a typical kind of a treatment that affects the levels of sensitivity in human beings. This sensitivity is lowered down to substances known as the ‘allergens’.

Allergens like pollen, mold or animal dander, are substances that elevate the allergy symptoms in a human being when the allergy affected person is exposed to these substances.

In ‘immunotherapy’ the patients are injected with increased amounts of allergens in order to maintain a desired level of the target therapeutic dose. This process develops a resistance for certain specific allergens.

‘Immunotherapy’ is now an established treatment for preventing the development of new allergies in human beings. This therapy is also very helpful in preventing the progression of allergic disease from allergic rhinitis to asthma. Immunotherapy often leads to long-lasting relief from various allergy symptoms even after the treatment is stopped.

How Immunotherapy Works

Immunotherapy works almost like a vaccine. Patient’s body responds to the injected amounts of a particular allergen. This injecting is gradual with increasing doses. This process develops an immunity or increased tolerance to the allergens. As a result, allergy symptoms decrease or minimize when the patients are exposed to that allergy in the future.

The process of ‘Immunotherapy’ involves two phases.

Build-Up Phase

This phase involves receiving injections with increasing quantity of the allergens with a frequency of about one to two times per week. This phase would last depending upon the frequency of the injections received. Generally this frequency ranges from three to six months on a conventional build-up schedule.

Attainment of the target dose level may be possible in a much shorter span of time ranging from merely one day to even up to several weeks, depending upon the rapid build-up schedules. This approach is commonly called as the “cluster and rush.”

These quick and rapid build up schedules involve giving two or more injections each visit. This rate of injecting will in turn decrease the number of visits during the build-up phase. However, there always exists a greater risk for the patients who may also experience an adverse reaction.

Maintenance Phase

This phase starts immediately after the attainment of effective therapeutic dose level. The effective maintenance dose depends on the patient’s level of allergen sensitivity and his or her response to the immunotherapy build-up phase.

This phase would be reflecting comparatively longer periods of time span between the successive immunotherapy treatments, ranging from two to four weeks.

A patient may start observing and experiencing an improvement and a decrease in symptoms during the build-up phase, but it may normally take as long as 12 months on the maintenance dose to notice a real improvement.

The effectiveness of immunotherapy treatments are more related with the time span of the treatment and the amount of doses of allergens.

Patients should preferably see an allergist or an immunologist if they have some connection between asthma, rhinitis, conjunctivitis and exposure to an allergen. Having a very poor response to medications along with the persisting allergy symptoms are also suggestive stages for doing so.

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