Do allergy injections (allergen immunotherapy) work for asthma?
Scientific evidence shows that immunotherapy does improve asthma in allergic patients, as shown in a recent meta-analysis (a statistic analysis of many studies pooling all the information from hundreds or thousands of patients) in the pulmonary journal The American Review of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Although some recent studies have shown that immunotherapy is not necessarily better than full medication treatment for asthma, these allergen injections will often lessen the amount of medication needed to control asthma. These injections are a great choice for those patients who don’t comply well with medications, those who don’t want to rely too much on medication, and especially for those patients who also have allergic rhinitis (“hay fever”). Allergen immunotherapy in appropriately selected patients should improve allergic rhinitis and asthma symptoms, and decrease the requirement for medicating both conditions.
