Specific immunotherapy with allergoids in atopic subjects, hyporeactive to other vaccines

Allergoids comply with the therapeutic requirement to reach high doses of the injected allergen, since the modifications of the allergens cause a loss of allergenicity, though the immunogenicity is being retained. Considering that it is possible to use a starting dose 40 times higher in comparison with retard vaccines, we thought it very expedient to treat with allergoids 18 patients allergic to parietaria, and 12 patients allergic to grass pollen, who had shown no clinical improvement after immunotherapy, lasting for at least three years with retard vaccines. The therapeutic results obtained are the following: improvement in 66% of the parietaria allergic patients after the first year, and of the 72% in the second year, of the 75% of the grass pollen allergic patients after the first year and of the 83% in the second year. They can be interpreted as due to the fact that such patients are always poorly reactive to the doses of allergens commonly present in retard vaccines. On the contrary, they do react to allergoids, both due to the high amount of allergen administered, and to the fact that polymerization brings about a stronger epitopic expression matched by a higher immunogenic activity. Moreover, the data are also indicative for a good relationship between the antibody titer of antigen-specific blocking IgG and the clinical effectiveness valued by means of symptom and medication scores.