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| |  Sublingual Monotherapy Improves Quality of Life in Polysensitised Patients With Allergic Rhinitis: Presented at EAACI By Judith Moser, MD WARSAW, Poland -- June 11, 2009 -- Sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) provides significant improvements in the quality of life of polysensitised patients with allergic rhinitis -- even when they are treated with only 1 extract, according to the results of a study presented here at the 28th Congress of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI). “With this observational study, we addressed the quality-of-life issue in polysensitised patients who were treated with SLIT,” said Silvia Scurati, PhD, Stallergenes, Milan, Italy, presenting the analysis here at a poster session on June 9. Quality of life is a central issue for patients with allergic rhinitis, she explained, and has been evaluated in a number of epidemiological and interventional trials. So far, however, there has been a lack of data on polysensitised patients. For the current study, 16 large allergy centres in Italy recruited 167 patients with allergic rhinitis due to polysensitisation. More than half of patients had rhinitis (53.3%), and it was considered “persistent” in 66.5% of these cases. A small proportion of patients had asthma only (1.8%), but 44.9% had both rhinitis and asthma. Skin-prick tests were performed to analyse patient characteristics, resulting in a mean finding of 3.65 sensitisations per patient. The 3 most frequently prescribed SLIT allergens were house dust mites, grasses, and wall pellitory. Quality of life was measured with the Rhinitis Quality of Life Questionnaire (RQLQ) in all subjects at baseline and after 1 year of SLIT. “Our first analysis focused on the kind of treatment offered to the patients,” Dr. Scurati noted. The assessment demonstrated that the major proportion of polysensitised patients (n = 123) were treated with just 1 extract for the main allergic cause of their symptoms. A smaller amount of patients were treated with 2 extracts (n = 31) or more (n = 13). The quality-of-life assessments after 1 year of treatment demonstrated significant improvements (P < .01) for each of the issues on the RQLQ questionnaire (activity, sleep, general problems, practical problems, nose symptoms, eye symptoms, emotional aspects). “SLIT is able to improve quality of life in polysensitised patients,” concluded Dr. Scurati. “Also, polysensitised patients can benefit from SLIT even when they are only treated with 1 extract.” Funding for this study was provided by Stallergenes GmbH & Co. [Presentation title: Sublingual Immunotherapy in Polysensitized Patients: Effects on Quality of Life. Abstract 1222]
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