Curing Allergy

Immunotherapy is the name for methods of trying to retrain the immune system to not be allergic any more. For some allergies, eg milk and egg, you can do this by carefully introducing a small amount of the food (when advised to do so) and then gradually building up the amount given as your body gets more used to it.

This is not something that we do for all allergies, as there is a risk of causing reactions.

For moderate to severe bee/wasp allergy, treatment with a course of venom injections is proven to work but is not available everywhere.

For hay fever, there are grass and tree pollen tablets and injections that significantly reduce symptoms (although maybe not until the year after you start treatment), given as a course each year for 1-3 years.  These are unfortunately not currently available on the NHS in Scotland.

There is good evidence for immunotherapy for peanut allergy where peanut flour or a commercial peanut extract is given every day, and the dose increased every 2 weeks, for 6 months.  91% of children in Andrew Clark’s STOP study were then able to eat 5 peanuts without reacting.  This is not however the same as a complete cure (skin prick tests remain positive), and some children suffered severe reactions during treatment, so this is not something to try at home!

Further research is on going, but no treatment is currently available on the NHS in Scotland. More research can be found here at the Cambridge Peanut Allergy Clinic website http://www.peanut.cuh.org.uk/ for more information about the only private service available in the UK.