Food Allergy Treatments
Food Allergy Treatments
What is a Food Allergy?
Allergic Reactions to Food - and How Prairie Allergy Can Help
Local or body-wide reactions that occur when specific foods trigger the immune system. At Prairie Allergy, we offer testing on the skin, through bloodwork, and sometimes may offer an oral challenge to the food to determine allergic status.
Management of food allergy may include avoidance or immunotherapy, depending on your particular treatment goals.
Food Allergies? There's Ways to Fix That
Navigating through food allergies can be challenging, but with the right guidance and support, it becomes a manageable journey. At Prairie Allergy, we transform the challenge of food allergies into an opportunity for empowerment and well-being. We are dedicated to providing a comprehensive and personalized plan of care that ensures the safety and confidence of both patients and their families.
Our approach to diagnosing food allergies is thorough and patient-centric. We combine the insights from the patient’s ingestion and reaction history with advanced blood and skin testing to assess the risk of food allergy accurately. In some cases, an oral food challenge in our monitored clinic setting may be conducted to distinguish between tolerance and allergy, ensuring a precise diagnosis.
A confirmed diagnosis opens the door to a variety of tailored treatment options. We engage in detailed discussions to ensure that you are well-informed and confident in choosing the path that best suits your needs and lifestyle. Currently, treatment options include strict food avoidance, sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT), or oral immunotherapy (OIT). Please see below for more detail on these treatment options.
Every step at Prairie Allergy is taken with utmost safety in mind. Patients are equipped with epinephrine and comprehensive documentation for schools or workplaces, ensuring that support and safety mechanisms are always at hand. Dr. Everist can also provide reading materials and online resources to help you with your food allergy diagnosis.
Sublingual Immunotherapy (SLIT)
SLIT is a patient-friendly approach in which droplets of the purified food allergen are placed under the tongue daily, promoting a gradual desensitization. It’s characterized by its safety, with a less than 1% risk of severe allergic reaction and fewer than 5% of patients reporting side effects.
The goal of SLIT is to bolster confidence in managing foods with a “may contain” label, as well as reducing the risk of severe reactions from incidental ingestions.
Data is still emerging on this newer method of immunotherapy, however initial patient-controlled trials have demonstrated improved safety, flexibility, and feasibility compared to OIT.
Oral Immunotherapy (OIT)
OIT involves the ingestion of small, increasing quantities of the whole food allergen, leading to a maintenance phase where desensitization is sustained for the duration of therapy. The buildup phase is a structured process, with each step carefully monitored to ensure patient safety.
OIT’s goals are diverse. For some, it heralds the freedom of “free eating,” while for others, it offers the reassurance that larger accidental ingestions can be safely managed.
We now have data from over 20 years of patient-controlled trials with OIT, and are more knowledgeable than ever regarding the risks, benefits, and importance of patient selection for this treatment. OIT is a carefully controlled process because the risk of side effects and allergic reactions are higher than for either avoidance or SLIT. Over 90% of patients develop a side effect at some point during the buildup phase. Side effects range from GI discomfort to eosinophilic esophagitis to more severe allergic reactions such as anaphylaxis. Between 10-20% of patients who undergo OIT report use of their epinephrine injector at some point during their treatment.
Our Immunotherapy Options
Immunotherapy Treatments Designed to Suppress your Allergic Response System
QUICK-LI®
QUICK-LI®
Allergy Drops
(SLIT)
SLIT
Allergy Toothpaste
(OMIT)
OMIT
Allergy Shots
(SCIT)
SCIT
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