Windom Allergy, Asthma, Sinus

Hi I’m Dr. Neha Dunn and I wanted to share my personal journey with food allergies. Having a child with food allergies can feel scary. You are always checking labels of everything at the grocery store, worrying about an accidental ingestion, and hoping that restaurant staff avoid cross contamination. Vacations and family gatherings can be challenging since you don’t have control over the menu. You feel nervous about your child going places without you. Should you completely remove the food from your house and have your whole family avoid it? What will happen when your child goes to college or has...

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...

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<<

Our doctors organized and lectured at the 5th Annual Food Allergy Support Team (FAST) meeting held in Dallas, TX June 17-8, 2022. The meeting, for doctors in the US and Canada, offers the most cutting-edge information on treatment for food allergy. Our experiences at Windom Allergy were shared with the attendees and we picked up a few tips from other physicians. You may find the FAST website of interest:www.fastOIT.org.  New and Exciting! Allergy desensitization has taken many forms over the decades – subcutaneous immunotherapy (SCIT, or allergy shots) for environmental allergy, oral and intravenous desensitization for drug allergy, and oral immunotherapy (OIT) for food...

As seen here :  https://www.wesh.com/article/severe-allergies-treatment-oral-immunotherapy/39875473# Cole Dhoore, 5, has been forced to live differently than most kids. "They said never leave the house without an EpiPen,” said Cole’s mom, Hannah Dhorre. Cole has a severe allergy to cashews and walnuts. His mom was told Cole should never come into contact with anything that might bear even traces of tree nuts. "Once he started pre-school, that’s when we really realized how much it was going to impact him socially, and that’s when it felt more real and more scary,” said Dhoore. But a year ago, Hannah learned other kids with food allergies were...