Second year success for hayfever jab

Second year success for hayfever jab

The course involves six injections

A new hayfever vaccine is still working - more than a year after it was given to patients.

It increases the hope that one day a single jab will relieve pollen allergies for life.

The treatment, which took the form of six injections over six weeks, dramatically reduced allergic symptoms such as a runny nose, nasal congestion and sneezing.

Patients normally helpless without antihistamine drugs and decongestants were able to manage without them virtually all the time.

These studies represent a major advance in the development of new treatments for allergic disease

Dr Peter Creticos, Johns Hopkins University

The vaccine was tested on patients with "ragweed" allergy.

Ragweed is a plant in the aster family which grows extensively over large swathes of the US, causing allergy problems particularly in the autumn.

Benefits continue

All the volunteers were given the course of six injections prior to the 2001 ragweed season.

The majority of the patients enjoyed a better quality of life during the ragweed season.

However, the real excitement about the vaccine came when the allergy season returned the following year.

Many of the patients given the vaccine more than a year previously had fewer allergic symptoms and needed less relief medication.

The protection appeared to be similar to that experienced during the first season after the jabs.

Dr Peter Creticos, from Johns Hopkins University, which led the study, said: "We are particularly pleased that this brief, six-week, six-injection regimen can have lasting positive effects for more than one season of ragweed exposure.

"These studies represent a major advance in the development of new treatments for allergic disease, especially when compared with conventional allergy treatments, which can take years to be effective."

The vaccine works by attaching a molecule that boosts the immune system to the protein in ragweed responsible for the allergic reaction.

This "trains" the immune system to react differently to the protein.