Failure hyposensitisation in treatment of children with grass-pollen asthma.

Abstract

and if mucosa became sensitised IgA antibodies might be formed and inactivate the insulin. Hence the recent availability of human insulin, produced by DNA-recombinant techniques,9 appears to be more promising than porcine insulin.We thank the healthy subjects and diabetic patients who volunteered for this study. We Twenty asthmatic children with laboratory proved bronchial reactivity to rye-grass pollen were studied over two consecutive grass-pollen seasons. In the first year 11 patients received preseasonal hyposensitisation treatment with an aqueous rye extract and nine received placebo injections. No treatment was given in the second year. Patients in both the active-treatment and placebo groups showeda pronouncedclinical deterioration in their asthma during both pollen seasons. Serum concentrations of IgG-specific antibodies to the rye allergen before treatment were similar in both groups, but after immunotherapy and before the pollen season in the first year these antibody concentrations were raised significantly in the treated group (p< 0 005): by the middle of the pollen season the difference was no longer significant.