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Tablet that could cure hayfever
Last updated at 23:07pm on 12.10.06
Hayfever: Blights the lives of one in four Britons each summer
A daily tablet that could cure hay fever will be available within months.
The pills, which dissolve under the tongue, dramatically reduce the symptoms of the allergy which blights the lives of one in four Britons each summer.
Manufacturer, Danish drug firm ALK-Abello, believes its Grazax tablets, which can be taken at home, will even cure some sufferers.
The prescription-only pills, which are based on grass pollen, have recently been licensed for use and are expected to be on sale in the UK within three months.
Popped under the tongue once a day during the summer, they are the first tablets to tackle the underlying course of hay fever, rather than merely treat the symptoms.
Medicines already on the market, such as anti-histamine tablets and steroids, can provide relief but are short-acting and do little to help the worst sufferers.
Immunotherapy, in which sufferers are given injections of small doses of pollen, requires the patient to go to a hospital for up to 90 jabs over a three to five year period.
In contrast, the Grazax tablets can be taken at home.
Trials carried out in the UK and around Europe show they work in four in five people, reducing sneezing and easing blocked, stuffy noses and itchy eyes.
They should be taken as a five-month course for three years, with the first tablets taken in the spring, around two months before the hay fever season starts.
After three years, their effects should persist, with people who have stopped taking the tablets still finding relief.
It is possible some may even be cured.
British experts say the tablets have the power to transform the lives of hay fever sufferers.
Andrew Williams, a nurse who specialises in allergies at Homerton University Hospital in East London, said: "Hay fever can affect relationships and makes people pretty miserable for three months of the year."
"The tablets are not just treatments of the symptoms, but, over a period of time, the symptoms will have reduced so much that, if it is not cured, then patients will feel they have been cured."
Muriel Simmons (CORR), of charity Allergy UK, said: "Anything that can bring hay fever under control has got to be a major step forward."
The tablets are based on a protein found in pollen and responsible for the over-reaction of the immune system that leads to hay fever.
Giving people regular doses of the protein, in tablet form, leads to the body building up a tolerance to it, and an easing of symptoms.
ALK-Abello spokesman, Jacob Frische said: "Grazax is the first allergy tablet that improves patients' quality of life by treating the underlying cause of grass pollen allergy and not just the symptoms."
"It induces a protective immune response that reduces, and potentially cures, the allergic reaction to pollen."
Grazax, which is yet to be priced, is expected to go on sale in the UK this winter.
Initially available privately, it will not become available on the NHS unless the Government's drugs rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, decides its benefits outweigh its costs.
The tablets are just one of a host of allergy pills and vaccines in the pipeline.
These include a "one size fits all" jab, capable of warding off asthma, eczema and hay fever.
Being developed in Switzerland, the vaccine could be available in just four years.
