Windom Allergy, Asthma, Sinus

You’ve heard the buzz about treating your severe food allergy with drops under your tongue, sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT), now it’s time to find out what is involved in the SLIT journey. The good news is, the process is simple, convenient, safe, and effective. For starters, you need to make sure food desensitization is necessary for you. Strongly positive diagnostic testing and a history of reacting to the food are often enough, but sometimes an oral food challenge is worth doing to make sure you’re still highly allergic. While SLIT is typically the recommended form of desensitization, there are other options (see...

The short answer is, very well. The longer answer involves reviewing published research studies of patients treated with food sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT). There had been a few case reports of treating severe food allergy with drops under the tongue, i.e. SLIT, prior to 2011, but it was in that year the first study of a group of patients with peanut allergy came out in our major US allergy journal.1 This report from Dr. Windom’s alma mater, Duke University, treated 1-11 years old children for one year with daily SLIT drops and found that 50% were able to tolerate 7 peanuts or...

As I sit here and type, I’m also checking the NOAA hurricane tracking website. This is something we just instinctively do as seasoned Floridians during hurricane season. But as an allergist, I’m also curious to track the pollen counts from the pollen counting station at USF Tampa Allergy Division.  Today, the counts are medium high for weed pollen and mold. Two days from now, when Hurricane Helene hits, how will our allergic asthma patients be breathing? There is a phenomenon called Thunderstorm Asthma that starts or worsens after a thunderstorm. Not everyone with asthma gets an attack with thunderstorms, but it...

Before the 21st century, there wasn’t any treatment for food allergy, but that wasn’t from a lack of trying. Studies in the early 1990’s showed some promising results from administering peanut allergy shots, similar to the environmental allergy shots that had been a staple of the allergy profession since the 1930’s. Unfortunately, the program was shut down after a dosing error led to a fatal anaphylactic reaction in one of the children in the study. This set back food allergy investigations for about a decade. In 2006 the first case series in the US of administering peanut orally, oral immunotherapy (OIT),...

If you are not familiar with SLIT, we are talking about sublingual immunotherapy, the administration of an allergen under the tongue that over time makes you less allergic. SLIT has been referred to as “allergy drops,” and is an alternative treatment to oral immunotherapy (OIT). The sublingual route has been used in the treatment of environmental allergies (hay fever and asthma) for many years in Europe, and has recently gained more interest in the United States as an option to allergy shots.  Food proteins placed under the tongue come in contact with oral mucus membranes and are then recognized by special...

Here at Windom Allergy we are always excited to hear news about food allergy, but what’s new about a biologic that’s been on the market since 2003? Omalizumab (Xolair, an injectable medication that blocks the allergy antibody, IgE) first came out as a drug for asthma. We were one of the clinical research sites that tested the drug in our patients in the late 90’s, at the time in an intravenous form. It came to market as a subcutaneous shot, now in a convenient self-injecting syringe for home use. Once a drug is on the market, curious clinicians in concert with...

Congratulations to Dr. Windom for publishing "A Practical Focus on Multi-Food Oral Immunotherapy" in the Journal of Food Allergy. Thank you for furthering the field of food allergy and giving families options. >> View Article <<

Our very own Dr. Fergeson weighed in on her perspective on the impact of allergic rhinitis and allergy symptoms on academic productivity, according to a study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.  >>View Article<<

If you are one of the millions of American parents whose kiddo has food allergies, you know how much extra effort goes into keeping your kiddo safe while living with this condition. Like many parents, this may cause you much anxiety, and you've wished there was a way to help keep your kiddo safe. Until recently, allergists had few therapies to offer patients with food allergies. But now oral immunotherapy (OIT) and even sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) are becoming more accessible. But what really is OIT and SLIT, and who are good candidates for these treatments? Click here to listen to the...

We just said goodbye to our 8 year-old milk allergic Australian who came to Sarasota for milk oral immunotherapy (OIT). She has returned to Brisbane drinking a small amount of milk daily. On the research front, Dr. Panida Sriaroon from All Children’s Hospital in St. Pete presented a poster of our first 72 peanut OIT patients in California at Stanford’s Gordon Research Conference. Dr. Shiaroon spent several days in Sarasota combing our records to prepare her awesome scientific presentation.