FOOD INTOLERANCE TREATING: ENZYME-POTENTIATED DESENSITIZATION
This method is less widely practised than provocation-neutralization therapy. It depends on the ability of an enzyme, (3-glucuronidase, to enhance the desensitizing effect of a food antigen. The food extract is applied to a scrape on the skin, along with the enzyme. Because the extract is not injected into the skin, it is safer for people with violent allergic reactions, and this method has been successfully used to treat a patient with immediate food-allergic reactions involving a range of foods.
In practice, the skin is scratched and the food-extracts-plus-enzyme applied to it in a small plastic cup. The same dose is given to all patients, and a comprehensive mixture of food extracts is generally used – not just those to which the patient is sensitive. This is said to work, and it obviously means that an elimination diet is less important. One drawback of such ‘blanket therapy’ is that there may be a worsening of the symptoms in the early stages because the patient becomes sensitized to some of the foods in the extract that were not a problem previously. Subsequent treatments apparently cancel out these effects.
An advantage of this technique over neutralization therapy is that the treatments are only needed about once every three months, and the frequency falls to once a year after a time. However, there have been far fewer trials of the method, and it is difficult to say what proportion of patients might be helped by it.
There is a modified form of this treatment in which the mixture of food extracts and enzyme is injected into the skin.
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