Do seasonal allergies make you miserable? Are you blowing your nose and sneezing during beautiful weather? You want to go outside, but you’re stuck inside holding a box of tissues.
If over-the-counter or prescription medication doesn’t relieve your symptoms enough, perhaps you’re considering allergy shots. You’ve heard that traditional immunotherapy via allergy shots takes a while to help relieve symptoms. Is there a faster way to get relief?
Our board-certified allergists with Advanced Allergy & Asthma provide allergy shots in two different ways. If your symptoms are interfering with your quality of life, you want relief sooner rather than later. You may be eligible for rush immunotherapy.
The first step in immunotherapy treatment for allergies is comprehensive testing. We administer a blood and a skin test to determine exactly what substances your body reacts to negatively. Then we develop a mixture of the allergens that cause your discomfort.
Rush immunotherapy provides 2-4 shots containing small amounts of what you’re allergic to within approximately 30 minutes of each other in one day. You receive these shots once a week for three weeks. You develop tolerance at a much faster rate than with the traditional allergy shot protocol.
Each of the first three weeks, when you come in for your shots, you need to be prepared to spend the day at our office. We monitor you carefully to ensure you don’t have an adverse reaction. When you reach your maintenance dose, you need to come in for a shot every month until your body no longer senses a threat from the allergen — usually 3-5 years.
Traditional immunotherapy starts with one shot once a week for several weeks that delivers a tiny amount of the allergen to your body. You wait in the office 30 minutes after each shot to ensure you don’t have a severe allergic reaction.
In the next phase of treatment, you receive a shot every two weeks, with a little more of the allergen in the shot. After a period of several more weeks, you graduate to getting a shot every three weeks, with an increased amount of allergen in the shot, and then finally, you reach a maintenance dose, given every month.
It takes 4-6 months to reach a maximum dose in your allergy shot. At that point, you need to come in once per month for a shot. We continue to monitor your progress. You may need to continue monthly shots for 3-5 years to ensure that your body is retrained and your system no longer perceives the allergen as a threat.
Because this process is much slower than rush immunotherapy, you’re still plagued with symptoms in the meantime.
Rush immunotherapy helps relieve your symptoms faster than traditional immunotherapy. You receive more than one shot the first day of treatment; you reach your maintenance dose more quickly than with traditional immunotherapy.
Your time commitment is another major difference between the two forms of immunotherapy. You need to be prepared to spend the day at our office when you come in for your shots for the first three weeks of treatment.
You need to make arrangements for this time in your schedule. If you’re not able to do it, traditional immunotherapy can work for you. However, with traditional immunotherapy, you have a significant number of office visits over the long term. You can determine which schedule works better for you.
Rush immunotherapy may not be right for young children. They may not be able to tolerate more than one shot per day, much less spend an entire day in an office.
There’s a slightly higher occurrence of an allergic reaction when the rush protocol is used. We ensure safety by having you stay in the office during the initial treatments. We can administer a treatment right away if you have a reaction.
Call Advanced Allergy & Asthma or request an appointment at one of our two convenient offices in Ogden today if allergy symptoms are making you miserable.
