Orally Administered Grass Pollen

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Abstract
Controlled clinical trials [protein N units] to determine the safety and effectiveness of orally administered enteric-coated grass pollen tablets in patients with hay fever. The actual grass pollen dose in the 1st trial was 30 times the dose that is normally recommended for preseasonal oral pollen hyposensitization using pollen aqueous solution or pollen powder. The safety study will be described here. Twelve young adults with a history of grass pollen hay fever positive skin prick test and positive nasal provocation test with extracts of timothy grass pollen were randomly allocated to 1 of the treatment groups with 4 patients in each group taking enteric-coated Conjuvac Timothy tablets or enteric-coated Whole Timothy pollen tablets or enteric-coated placebo tablets. The study was double blind. Preseasonally, the patients received 342,500 PNU [protein N units] and in total they received 4,500,000 PNU during 6 mo. The patients receiving active treatment did not have any side effects. No significant changes were shown in the skin and nasal reactivity to grass pollen during the study. Neither were there any changes in timothy-specific IgE, IgG, total IgE nor histamine liberation from basophils.