Relieve Ragweed Allergies Without Shots
Tablets Help Relieve Symptoms Such as Runny Nose, Congestion, Watery Eyes
March 5, 2012 (Orlando, Fla.) -- For many allergy sufferers, getting shots is a pesky, even painful part of ragweed season. Now, researchers report success testing an under-the-tongue tablet as an alternative to injections in people with ragweed allergies.
In a study of more than 500 people with ragweed allergies, people who took the experimental tablets had less nasal congestion, eye tearing, and other allergy symptoms than those who took a placebo. Those given the new pills also needed fewer antihistamines and other allergy medications for relief.
The treatment is a type of immune therapy, the most common form of which is the allergy shot. Tiny amounts of the proteins to which you are allergic are injected to weaken the immune system's response to ragweed, grass, or other allergy triggers.
The new treatment works much the same way, but instead you put a tablet containing tiny extracts of allergens -- in this case ragweed proteins -- under the tongue each day until tolerance develops.
Immune therapy is the only treatment that's been proven to modify the natural course of the allergic disease, "actually turning it off and keeping it suppressed over time," says Johns Hopkins' Peter Creticos, MD, who led the new study.
Shots may work, "but some people are afraid of the needle or don't have time to go to the doctor's office [two to four times a month] during allergy season to get them," he says.
Also, "3% to 6% of people on allergy shots have systemic [throughout the body] allergic reactions that can be severe or life-threatening," Creticos tells WebMD.
That makes the tablets a welcome option, he says.
Merck & Co., which makes the new tablet and funded the study, plans to apply for FDA approval of tablets for both ragweed and grass allergies next year. The grass tablets are already in use in Europe.
The new study was presented here at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunotherapy.
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Tablets Relieve Ragweed Allergy Symptoms
The new study involved 565 adults with ragweed allergy, some of whom also had asthma. They were given one of two doses of either the once-daily tablet or a placebo for 52 weeks.