United Allergy Labs (UAL) attended the Annual Assembly & Exhibition for the first time in August. UAL specializes in providing fully-staffed and operational allergy services inside physicians’ offices. “We enjoyed meeting the LAFP physicians at the trade show and telling them about our allergy service line,” says Russ Kendrick, UAL regional sales manager. “The physicians were engaged and understood our business premise that assists them to offer allergy testing and immunotherapy in their practice.”


“At United Allergy Labs, we know that every patient is different and responds differently to allergens,” Kendrick says. “Our Certified Clinical Allergy Lab Specialists (CLS) manages the service under the physicians’ supervision and tests for the 50 most geographically specific airborne and mold allergens. Then the CLS custom-formulates allergy immunotherapy for each patient identified by the physician.”
The physician manages all medical decisions and supervises the functional aspects of the lab. The benefits recognized by the practice include better patient retention, increased new patient flow and better clinical care.

“Unlike antihistamines, nasal steroids and leukotriene modifiers, which only transiently suppress allergic inflammation, allergy immunotherapy is the only disease modifying therapeutic modality which has been shown to induce allergen tolerance for more than a decade after the cessation of treatment,” says Frederick Schaffer, MD, board certified allergist and immunologist, Clinical Associate Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, and UAL Chief Medical Officer.

“This long-term allergen tolerance and suppression of allergic inflammation is due to the generation of allergen-specific regulatory T cells (Treg). These Treg cells play a role in the suppression of allergen-specific IgE production by B cells, the responses of T helper (Th1 and Th2) cells , and decreasing the inflammation mediated by mast cells, basophils, and eosinophils. This suppression of allergic inflammation affects both early and late phase responses. In essence, long term allergy symptom suppression occurs with a related improvement in the patient’s quality of life. Also, immunotherapy has been shown to decrease the development and onset of new allergies, have a steroid-sparing effect for those with allergic asthma, and decrease the risk of developing asthma in those with allergic rhinitis,” Schaffer says.

###

Louisiana Academy of Family Physicians
Weekly e-Newsletter
September 6, 2011