Although medications available for allergy are usually very effective, they do not cure people of allergies. Allergen immunotherapy is the closest thing for a "cure" for allergy, reducing the severity of symptoms and the need for medication for many allergy sufferers.
Allergen immunotherapy changes the way the immune system reacts to allergens, by switching off allergy. The end result is that you become immune to the allergens, so that you can tolerate them with fewer or no symptoms.
Allergen immunotherapy is often recommended for treatment of allergic rhinitis (hay fever) due to pollen or dust mite allergy (and sometimes asthma) when:
- Symptoms are severe.
- The cause is difficult to avoid (such as grass pollen).
- Medications don't help or cause adverse side effects.
Dr Gunawardena performs allergy tests to identify your allergies. She follows the sublingual immunotherapy technique to treat your allergies. This involves a vaccine (vaccine drops that are applied and absorbed under the tongue) made specifically according to your allergy test results and used for a period of time to overcome our allergies. This is known as the desentizisation process.
Beginning with small doses and increasing them gradually on a weekly or biweekly basis, the therapy continues until a maintenance level is achieved. Then, a maintenance dose is injected every few weeks.