If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them

Meaning allergens! There is excellent research going on about the process of immunological habituation, a real possibility for some allergic patients who do not respond to conventional treatment. The idea is really brilliant and based in habituation, a basic learning process of living things which refers to the decrease in response due to the repeated presentation of a stimulus. An allergic reaction is an abnormal response of the immune system, which misinterprets that one or various otherwise innocuous substances are harmful for the body. Well, let it get used to them and the reaction will fade. That is what allergen immunotherapy is all about: trying to teach our immune system to tolerate substances that cause an allergy when inhaled, touched or eaten.

Immunotherapy is not a new-born, but it is gaining popularity due to the spread of allergies in the last decades (mainly related to pollution, urban life, industrialization and climate changes) and the growing realisation that conventional treatments are unsustainable. Mostly they rely on antihistamine drugs and corticosteroids to control symptoms, and when patients stop taking their medication, the problem hits back. Immunotherapy is highly cost-effective and it "goes for the throat". Growing amounts of a specific allergen are administered during a long period of time (about three years) and after that, voila, your immune system has made friends with the allergen and fights it no more -in more serious terms, you have developed an immunologic tolerance.

Allergies are pandemic nowadays, only in Europe they affect 150 million people. They are considered the most prevalent chronic disease, and usually lead to significant disruption of daily routines, both in children and adults, greatly decreasing their quality of life. Up to a 20% of people with allergies (and their families, friends, etc.) live in fear of death caused by an asthma attack or anaphylactic shock. This very rare reaction, anaphylaxis, has caused sublingual administration (easily done at home) to grow in popularity against subcutaneous administration of the allergen, which is restricted to health specialist professionals. There is still some work to do on raising patients' consciousness that they have to strictly follow the protocol to get the desired results -as it is always the case with long-term treatments.

As usual, there is much research left to do, too. With state-of-the-art resources, about 30% of patients do not respond positively to immunotherapy, although there is hope in new technologies applied to diagnosis of specific allergens, and to the chemical formulation of the extracts used in administration. Because the idea is still brilliant!

As I stated in the beginning, with allergies, if you can't beat them, join them.

Maria Gonzales, health blogger for Medico.com on a variety of topics including migrana, alergias, health 2.0 and more.