Sublingual Immunotherapy Experiment

I chose to do my 20 Time project on sublingual immunotherapy because there is not much information available about the procedure, and I thought my experience with it would be helpful to those considering using it, and I also wanted to confirm for myself that it worked. Initially, I planned on doing tests once a week for fifteen minutes each. the tests would include placing my face near the cat for the entire fifteen minutes, then recording my symptoms and their severity, duration, and the times they started and ended. However, because sublingual immunotherapy is such a slow process, I later decided to do trials only once every two weeks so that the trend would be more visible when I compared the symptoms from all of my different trials. I had several setbacks along the way; early on, I forgot my SLIT drops while on vacation, and I had to restart the drops from a lower dose when I got back, and later I was forced to figure out a way to prevent my cat from running off in the middle of a ...

For those who aren't aware, this blog is about sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT), a relatively new allergy treatment that desensitizes your body to allergens. It uses a liquid mixture containing whatever you are allergic to, and you put that mixture under your tongue for twenty seconds each night, building up to a top dose of four drops of the more concentrated bottle. I decided to test this procedure's effectiveness by conducting tests every two weeks in which I would stay with my cat (to whom I am allergic) for fifteen minutes and record my symptoms. For reference, here are my symptoms before beginning sublingual immunotherapy: 0:00- Start trial 6:30- Nose begins to itch 8:00- Nose starts running, becomes congested 13:15- Sneeze four times 15:00- Stop playing with cat 21:30- Nose still itchy, congested 25:00- Sneeze four times 27:50- Nose stops itching 36:00- Sneeze four times ~5:00:00- Congestion stops March 3rd: 0:00- Start experiment 6:30- Itchy back of nose...

For those who aren't aware, this blog is about sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT), a relatively new allergy treatment that desensitizes your body to allergens. It uses a liquid mixture containing whatever you are allergic to, and you put that mixture under your tongue for twenty seconds each night, building up to a top dose of four drops of the more concentrated bottle. The schedule:    10:1 Dilution:           Day 1: 1 drop           Day 2: 2 drops           Day 3: 3 drops           Day 4: 4 drops           Day 5: 5 drops           Day 6: 6 drops           Day 7: 7 drops           Day 8: 8 drops           Day 9: 9 drops           Day 10: 10 drops    1:1 Dilution:           Day 11: 1 d...

One day before starting SLIT, I tested the strength of my normal allergic reactions. I played with my cat for fifteen minutes, petting her to send her shed fur in the air and keeping my face  at most a foot away from her. Here are the symptoms I noticed, as well as when I began to notice them and when they started to fade away: 0:00- Start playing with cat 6:30- Nose begins to itch 8:00- Nose starts running, becomes congested 13:15- Sneeze four times 15:00- Stop playing with cat 21:30- Nose still itchy, congested 25:00- Sneeze four times 27:50- Nose stops itching 36:00- Sneeze four times ~5:00:00- Congestion stops There were some problems that I ran into. The first was that my cat, being hyper and having an attention span of two milliseconds, kept running off and attacking things. I dealt with this by shutting her in my room, so she wouldn't get too far, and next time I will do this experiment when she is tired so she doesn't want to go attack things. Another issue...

This blog is for my 20% time project in Anatomy and Physiology. In 20% time, we spend twenty percent of our class time working on a project we are interested in. I have severe cat allergies, but I also have a cat, and so I wondered  if there was a way to treat or even get rid of my allergies. I went to the doctor and found out about a procedure named sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT),  which is a relatively new procedure in which you put a drop of whatever you're allergic to under your tongue, training your immune system to no longer react to it. Typically, this process takes about three to five years. This procedure is much more convenient and safe than its cousin, subcutaneous immunotherapy, or allergy shots, which have been studied much more extensively and basically do the same thing, but using shots rather than drops. I decided to try SLIT, but because of the lack of available information on this procedure, I wanted to do an experiment of my own which would answer my ques...