FAQ ASIT – Allergen-specific immunotherapy

The pathomechanism of ASIT involves a modulation of a Th2 to a Th1 cell response and changes the immune system so that an allergic reaction of the organism does not occur.

Allergic diseases cannot be cured, but in 70-80% of cases they can be well controlled with the help of allergen-specific immunotherapy. In some cases, there is a marked improvement after only a few weeks, but in other cases it takes 10 months or longer before a clinical improvement is visible. If there is a good response to the therapy, it is strongly recommended that it be continued for life. Immunotherapy should therefore be continued even after symptoms have improved or become symptom-free.

Yes, they exist. But the sublingual immunospecific therapy (SLIT) is not yet offered in Germany.

• For animals older than 1 year
  For seasonal allergens such as pollen and insects ► after the season
  For allergens occurring all year round such as mites and moulds ► all year round

You can wait up to a few months. However, after a longer period of time (half a year to a year or longer), a new test should be carried out, as the sensitisation or the allergen spectrum may have changed and you want to inject a current, individual, allergen-specific solution.

In principle, the test does not have to have been carried out at Laboklin.

Every animal – just like every human being – reacts very individually to known allergens, especially in the case of an allergy. There are also studies that show that a “standard” ASIT, which contains the most common year-round or seasonal allergens, has significantly worse success rates (30 %, placebo) than a solution that is individually tailored to the patient. Therefore, an individual allergen determination (differentiation) should always be carried out in order to be able to compile an individual ASIT suitable for the patient.

No, if there are no symptoms, it makes little sense to carry out an allergy test or an ASIT. Allergy is a clinical diagnosis. A positive allergy test in this case only provides information about sensitisation. But sensitisation does not necessarily cause clinical symptoms, and without a clinic there is no disease. A positive allergy test may mean that an animal is below the threshold, but it may also mean that it will never develop allergic symptoms.

Unfortunately, there are no reliable data on this yet, so it is recommended not to use this therapy in pregnant animals.

This depends on the duration of the therapy interruption. Please contact our allergy team.

Routine vaccinations should not be applied at the same time as the injection of allergen-specific immunotherapy, but should be given at the earliest three days after the injection and, if the interval is already longer, in the middle between injections.