Millions of people suffer from allergies. For some, it is a minor inconvenience that comes around for a few weeks each season. For others, it is a life threatening condition that impacts virtually every aspect of their life.

Fortunately, modern medicine has provided things like antihistamines and epinephrin that can help treat the symptoms and keep people safer and more comfortable than would otherwise be possible. Unfortunately, those two options are quite limited and only serve to treat the symptoms.

This may all be changing very soon.

A medication called omalizumab (often sold as Xolair) has been around for a long time and was used to help deal with asthma. Recently, however, it has gone through clinical trials for use as an allergy treatment. Not a treatment for seasonal allergies. Not a treatment to help people who were exposed to a food allergy. A true allergy treatment that can work to address ALL allergies.

This is because it doesn’t treat the symptoms, it treats the underlying cause of all allergic reactions.

Sayantani Sindher is a clinical associate professor at Stanford University’s Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research. He talked about this medication with Vox, saying:

“The biggest advantage of antibody-based therapeutics is that they offer the potential to target the underlying pathways driving allergic reactions in general. This means antibody-based therapies will simultaneously impact all of the patient’s allergens.”

To make it even better, this treatment is long lasting. With most types of allergy medicine, you have to take it daily to keep the effects going. With this, you simply get a shot one time a couple weeks before your seasonal allergies are expected to kick in and it will last for months.

If you struggle with a dangerous food allergy, you will get on a schedule that requires occasional shots to remain effective. Having a shot every few months is better than having to remember to take pills each day (or needing to carry around life saving medication in case of exposure).

The drug has been used for a long time, and in 2024 the FDA approved it for use as a treatment for food allergies.

One major obstacle at the moment is that the drug is expensive. At approximately $60,000 for a years worth, most people won’t be able to use it. The FDA did approve a generic option recently though, so those prices could be plummeting soon.

This is potentially life saving news for allergy sufferers.

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