Immunotherapy With Allergens

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Abstract
IMMUNOTHERAPY is the art of administering increasing doses of a specific extract comprising allergens to which the sensitive (atopic) individual would respond with allergic symptoms on natural environmental exposure in an attempt to alter that patient's immunologic response and thereby ameliorate the allergic patient's typical symptoms. Immunotherapy has its roots in the early immunization work carried out by Pasteur, Jenner, and others that led to the development of highly effective vaccines that have virtually eradicated a wide variety of diseases such as smallpox and polio. As practiced for the treatment of allergic diseases, it is based on the work of two English physicians, Noon and Freeman,1,2who in 1911 attempted to immunize grass "hayfever" sufferers with serial injections of grass-pollen extract. Although in their opinion the mechanism of action was that of an "antitoxin" produced against a "pollen toxin," their studies established that significant clinical improvement correlated with changes