Allergist Jay Lieberman, MD: Xolair, it was just approved for food allergies by the FDA in February of 2024. So what it is is an injectable therapy. We’ve been using it for 30 years in patients with asthma. It’s approved for other conditions as well, such as like chronic urticaria or chronic hives. It’s approved all the way down to six years of age for asthma and now it’s approved down to one year of age for food allergy.
And the way it works is, essentially it targets the allergic antibody and when it does that, it essentially makes your allergy cells less reactive, so that if a patient who’s allergic to peanut, let’s say, can tolerate this much peanut without having a reaction, the majority who go on the therapy after four to six months of therapy can then tolerate a lot more.
So it offers a protection, for example, from accidental ingestion. Hopefully a protection from anaphylaxis or a severe allergic reaction if they were to eat it as well. Now it is an injectable medicine, so it has to be done with a small little injection underneath the skin. In most offices, the first three will be done in the office to make sure there’s no reaction to it and the patient will wait in the office.
After the first three, most offices if the patient wants, will then allow the patient to dose it at home. For food allergies it can be dosed either every two weeks or every four weeks and that’s based on a blood test that the doctor would have to draw to determine the dose and the frequency.
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Resource Type: Video | Allergy, Asthma Treatment, Food Allergies
