“A good estimate is that sublingual tablets are about three times more expensive than shots,” said Dr. Sautter. “In this case, you are paying for the ‘convenience factor’ as well as the fact that it is a new drug, and I would expect cost to decrease over time as more sublingual tablets enter the market.”
Explore This Issue
June 2014Cheryl Alkon is a freelance medical writer based in Massachusetts.
What’s Next in Allergy Treatment
Other promising allergy treatments are being developed, said Dr. Cox. Circassia, based in the U.K., is developing an effective injectable treatment for cat allergy, while Pollinex Quattro, developed by Allergy Therapeutics, also based in the U.K. and known as Grass MATA MPL in the U.S., is a four-injection method to treat grass allergy in as few as three weeks, she said.
But with new oral immunotherapy treatment now available in the U.S., there’s a new “proof of concept,” said Dr. Marple. If you can desensitize patients to a number of grasses using oral immunotherapy, he said, you can do it for any antigen. “I’d be surprised if other antigen companies aren’t lining up in the pipeline for development.”—CA