How to Avoid This Serious Allergic Reaction

Long-Term Therapies for Anaphylaxis

Certain medical treatments may help reduce your risk of anaphylaxis, or reduce the severity of a reaction, if you can’t avoid exposure to an allergen.

One such situation is when you haven’t identified the cause of recurrent anaphylaxis (sometimes referred to as chronic idiopathic anaphylaxis). If this condition becomes frequent and severe, you may benefit from long-term steroid therapy to stop these reactions from happening.

This therapy should be directed by an allergy specialist and involves taking the corticosteroid drug prednisone (Deltasone) daily, along with other drugs as needed when you have a reaction (including epinephrine).

In cases where you may not be able to totally avoid an allergen — such as insect (bee, wasp, hornet, or fire ant) venom, allergen immunotherapy, also known as desensitization, may be helpful.

For this therapy, you’ll be given a series of allergy shots (injections) that contain increasing doses of the allergen to make your immune system less sensitive to it.

This therapy is considered very effective, but some people may have trouble tolerating it. It also carries the risk of causing an allergic reaction, including anaphylaxis, if the dose is increased too quickly.

Injections for allergen immunotherapy are usually given once or twice a week until you reach what’s known as a maintenance dose. Then, in order to become immune indefinitely, the injections are usually done every four to six weeks for about five years.

Because of the risk of an allergic reaction, you’ll need to stay at your doctor’s office for monitoring for at least 30 minutes after receiving each allergy shot.