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New drug could eliminate allergies

Allergies could be wiped out in a single blow by tricking the immune system into thinking it is encountering an old foe, scientists believe. The idea is based on the so-called ‘hygiene hypothesis’, the notion that the cleanliness of modern life deprives the immune system of a proper training against disease so that it ends up out of kilter and reacts to things that are harmless, such as grass pollen.

Cytos Biotechnology of Zurich, Switzerland, has developed a drug which fools the body into thinking it is being attacked by mycobacteria. This class of bacteria is encountered far less today because of modern cleanliness.

Preliminary results from a trial of 10 people with hay fever suggest that after a six-week course of injections, their sensitivity to grass pollen was reduced a hundredfold, eliminating their symptoms. Cytos claims the patients remained symptom-free up to eight months after the therapy, though it could not say whether the relief would be permanent.

Unusually for an allergy treatment, the patients weren’t given an accompanying shot of the allergen to which they normally react, in this case grass pollen. This suggests that the drug tackles the root cause of allergies and could therefore be effective against a wide range of allergens. An earlier study suggests that the drug also works in patients with an allergy to house dust mites, although they were given accompanying doses of the allergen as well.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .