Allergy drops are off-label use sublingual form of allergen specific immunotherapy for many years. It is an effective allergy treatment for certain type of environmental allergy. However there are not much studies to show a standardized approach to this technique. Therefore the desensitization efficacy of several allergens are unknown as well as the consensus on treatment duration. Recently, the FDA has approved 3 types of allergy tablets for patients with Ragweed, Timothy grass and dust mites. Both allergy drops & allergy tablets carry a lower risk of getting anaphylaxis than allergy shots but they are only available for limited allergens.
For more information, please visit the American College of Allergy Asthma & Immunology – Sublingual Immunotherapy.
At Texas Allergy, we currently offer sublingual immunotherapy or allergy drops to both environmental allergies and selected food allergies. If you or your family have further questions about those options, please stop by our office to discuss further about this method. Allergy drops are prefered in some cases when patients do not have many allergies to the environment.
The benefits of allergy drop are:
- Convenient since it can be administered at home
- Does not get injections so no needles, no pain
- Very low risk of anaphylaxis so it can be done at home
- It can be done for both environment allergy and food allergy
The downside of this method is:
- It is not as effective as the injection method or allergy shot in environmental allergies due to wasting of allergens and the inability of this method to absorb enought allergens into lymphatic drainage system.
- It does not induce as much tolerance as the oral immunotherapy method (OIT) for food allergy treatment, meaning the patient cannot eat a lot of the desensitized food for this method.
- It does not work very well in individuals with multiple sensitivities or allergies.
- The effectiveness varies greatly from clinic to clinic or between suppliers of this vaccine.
- It is contra-indicated in patients with eosinophilic esophagitis since it worsens the symptoms. The question if this sublingual treatment method could lead to inflammation in the gut epithelium is still unknown.
- It is not covered by insurance and not FDA approved so it is a cash pay option.
