[Situation and trends of hyposensitisation treatment (author's transl)]

Since the introduction of the hyposensitization treatment by Noon and Freeman in 1911, an essential change of the hyposensibilisation technique, despite numerous recently published results, has not been able to be demonstrated up to now. In most cases, treatment is still done with and allergen mixture consisting of a variety of unknown compounds with changing composition according to own experiences concerning initial and final dosis of the allergen or the application intervals. The linkage of the allergens to chemical substances, the modification into so-called allergoids as well as the investigation of the hyposensitisation success, such as determination of blocking antibodies, the course of the titre of specific antibodies by the RAST technique, the histamin liberation from leucocytes of allergic persons after antigen contact and the lymphocyte stimulation by allergens are starting points for developing a scientific base to the hyposensitisation treatment and for introducing new results mainly from experiments on animals into the clinical practice. Standardisation of allergens, optimisation of the dosis and the application intervals as well as the further decrease of the allergenicity and the optimal choice of the adjuvants have to be regarded as the problems to be solved in the next future. On the other hand, the use of allergen determinants linked to non-immune carriers or the induction of a tolerance by another way seem to be not yet a subject with clinical relevance during the next years.