How Does Immunotherapy Work?

Our immune system responds to substances in our environment that we eat, drink or breathe in, but only "allergic" people develop an "allergic" immune response. Allergy injections alter the way in which the immune system reacts to allergen. By giving small but increasing amounts of allergen at regular intervals, tolerance increases. The end result is that you become "immune" to the allergens, so that you can tolerate them with fewer or no symptoms. This process is also known as specific immunotherapy, because one is trying to turn off one or more specific allergic responses.

In other words, if you have injections for grass pollen allergy, it will not affect your allergy to cat or house dust mite or vice versa. In general, one tries to switch off one or two allergic responses at a time. The higher the dose tolerated without significant side-effects, the more likely is treatment successful.

The mechanism of action is supposed to be via production of blocking antibodies, Which helps to stop the mechanism involved in production of symptoms of allergy.