pharmacy
An end to hay fever? The new wave of effective cures for seasonal allergies
By the 1980s, this became a recognised treatment. These "allergy shots" proved highly effective, easing the sneezing and suffering of thousands of patients. But there was a problem. "Injection immunotherapy has occasionally killed people," says Scadding, due to anaphylaxis – an allergic reaction to the shot itself. These events are extremely rare, occurring in about one per 2-2.5 million injections, and today, thanks to a better understanding of risk factors and of proper administration, they are rarer still. But when about 26 anaphylaxis-related deaths from subcutaneous immunotherapy were recorded in the UK from 1957 to 1986, the UK passed new…