Adjuvant Speeds Relief For Pollen Sufferers.(Brief Article)

2001 SEP 5 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

by N.R. Saltmarsh, staff medical writer - A new allergy vaccine for pollen sufferers is more effective when given with monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL), a Th1-stimulating adjuvant, researchers in England have found.

When the vaccine was administered with MPL, only four pre-season injections were necessary to produce the kind of antibody changes normally seen with long-term allergy treatment, said K.J. Drachenberg and colleagues.

"A switch of specific T-cell activity from Th2 > Th1 to Th1 > Th2 is believed to be an important change seen after long-term vaccination therapy," noted Drachenberg and coworkers. "An immunologic adjuvant that enhances such a switch could be used to reduce the number of injections required." Such an adjuvant, they suggested, is MPL (Corixa).

In a multicenter, placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind trial, pollen-sensitive subjects received four preseason injections of either the new allergy vaccine comprising a tyrosine-adsorbed, glutaraldehyde-modified grass pollen extract plus MPL adjuvant (n=81) or the vaccine without adjuvant (n=60).

The MPL group reported statistically fewer nasal and ocular symptoms and had lower combined symptom and medication scores, reported Drachenberg and associates. Skin prick testing revealed a significant reduction of skin sensitivity in the MPL group compared with placebo and higher grass-pollen-specific IgG antibody, they said.

MLP subjects did not experience the rise in immunoglobulin E (IgE) during the first year of treatment seen with placebo takers, the researchers added ("A well-tolerated grass pollen-specific allergy ...