In allergy sufferers, for unknown reasons, the immune system "blots" harmless flower pollen, food particles and other substances that are normally health-neutral with dangerous germs or parasites. It mobilizes immune cells to strenuous and chronic struggle with the apparent but mass influxing "aggressor" - an allergen. The result of this fight are symptoms that cause serious damage to health.
Can allergies be cured?
This is the most common question of allergy sufferers who, without success, have been trying to get rid of the onerous disease for years. Definitely yes! And there is a way - desynsybilacja, or sensible desensitization - claims a known allergologist prof. dr. hab. Krzysztof Buczyłko from the Medical University of Lodz.
Condition No. 1 - refine allergy symptoms
At the beginning, however, it needs to be clarified whether our allergy is a type of latent tendency - somewhere, there, we once experienced urticaria after eating, or sneezed in a few days without a conscious reason, because we did not suffer from a cold. The real problem is the long-lasting, nagging symptoms - such as a runny nose, cough or shortness of breath - in a word, a clear allergic disease.
Can a well diagnosed allergic disease be cured?
Professor In the case of overt allergic disease and the mentioned long-lasting symptoms, they can be cured pharmacologically today, because there are many excellent medicines. And when it comes to the so-called tendency - let it stay - you do not have to cure it - it is enough to recognize the so-called "risk factors" and the patient who perceives his allergy skillfully will learn to avoid allergens.
Ed. - What if the pharmacological treatment only reduces the symptoms and the allergen can not be avoided? After all, dust and mites can not be avoided in the couch or pollen in the air
Professor Here, the answer for treatment is more difficult, fortunately for about a hundred years - positive. It sounds - well prepared and carried out sensible - "desensitization".
What is this sensible desensitiy?
Professor This is nothing but smart desensitization. It consists in giving the patient specially selected, increasing doses, what has already intensified the allergic disease, in such a way as to block it in the bud.
And how is this "smart desensitization" carried out? Once a lifetime or every few years?
Professor For example, the most commonly used method of desensitization in plant pollen allergy is subcutaneous administration - from one-tenth to the entire milliliter of an allergen solution (usually 10-12 injections) every year before the anticipated flowering season of a given plant group. For grasses, it is best from February to April. However, in a year-long allergy to house dust mites, vaccinations are year-round. Recently, both ways become similar to each other and more and more often hay fever and hay asthma are treated with a year-round method - the best extract of domestic Catalet pollen.
Ed. Does it mean that despite the huge number of dangerous pollen that causes a runny nose, cough and the possibility of exacerbations - eg asthma - we additionally give them in the form of a vaccine?
Professor - Yes, but in a correspondingly reduced dose, so as to hold the healing process without causing unnecessary risks.
Is such desensitization recommended for all allergy sufferers?
Professor -In accordance with WHO (International Health Organization) recommendations - the indications for desensitisation in allergic rhinitis are those patients in whom antihistamines and topical preparations do not sufficiently relieve symptoms of the disease, as well as those who do not wish long-term pharmacological treatment, or the treatment results in undesirable side effects.However, the condition for taking desensitization is the early precise diagnosis of allergens acting on the patient.
Allergy treatment
Is modern immunotherapy safe?
Professor Today, only allergens are used for vaccines that are standardized and well characterized, and increasingly recombinant, ie artificially recreated. This means that the allergist knows exactly their concentration, strength and proportions of composition, which allows to achieve in therapy the appropriate level of "medical art" characterized by high efficiency and excellent safety.
What desensitization is the most effective and at the same time safe?
Professor - According to the principles developed recently by the Immunotherapy Committee of the European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology, the most important is the definition of the so-called a safe total dose that can be given to a patient. This dose of medicine is important, because according to the position of experts - the assessment of the effectiveness of treatment is based not only on reducing the symptoms of the disease, but also on reducing the dose of medicines.
Ed. Can desensitization with pollen have a beneficial effect on food allergy?
Professor Numerous studies have shown that when administering plant pollen extracts, the symptoms of food allergy decrease in many patients. For example, a person who is highly sensitized to celery, which we do not desensitize - treated with a mugwort extract, due to the so-called August cattle, reports an improvement in tolerance for soups and salads with this vegetable. Another example is successful desensitis with birch pollen, which also removes allergy to apples.
Ed. What would you compare the work of an allergist doctor?
Professor It is a bit more difficult than the ENT tasks. When an "organ clinician" is diagnosed with a cold, it usually suffices to determine the section where inflammation and duration occur. An allergist needs to set out characteristic and sometimes very bizarre symptoms to get his medical conclusions. For an experienced doctor in this specialty - the morning series of more than 10 sneezes in October, without symptoms of colds - may indicate allergy to mites. Nose clogged after ingesting honey - it often signals allergy to pollen of plants, and itchy after eating an apple - allergy to birch pollen. Thus, the diagnosis of allergy and its complicated connections is a real art in which a man must see his entire physiology constantly learn to solve new allergic knots.
