Learn About Rush Immunotherapy

Rush Immunotherapy

Treatment of allergic rhinitis (nasal and sinus allergies), allergic asthma, and allergy to insect venoms is based on three principles:

Immunotherapy (allergy shots) involves injecting very small amounts of the substances causing allergic reactions and then building up to full immunizing doses.1

Traditional immunotherapy procedures consist of once or twice weekly injections of gradually increasing doses.  This results in reaching fully effective doses over 3 to 6 months and requires about 20 visits for injections.  Once full doses are achieved, maintenance doses are given, usually once a month, for 3 years. Patients usually notice improvement after 3 to 6 months. Approximately 7% of patients have a systemic reaction, approximately 0.5% of injections result in a systemic reaction.2

Rush immunotherapy procedures are designed to reach maintenance much faster than can be achieved with traditional immunotherapy. Patients are given allergy medications in advance and over 7 hours the doses are increased to about 1/10th of the full maintenance dose.  This avoids the first 17-18 visits for traditional immunotherapy and allows clinical improvement to occur much faster.  Full maintenance usually is reached within a month. One recent study of rush immunotherapy involving 2017 patients indicated that 2% had a systemic reaction and 1 had a severe reaction requiring epinephrine.

Potential advantages of rush immunotherapy:

Decisions about what form of immunotherapy is best are made depending on an individual patient’s situation and preferences.

1. A detailed patient oriented review of immunotherapy can be found at the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology web site at www.acaai.org under patient education, A-Z allergy topics, Shots (immunotherapy).

2. Allergen immunotherapy: a practice parameter. American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.[Annals of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology. 90(1 Suppl 1):1-40, 2003 Jan.