Hymenoptera venom immunotherapy: a lifesaving tratment inducing IgE modifications in real life polysensitized subjects

Hymenoptera venom allergy is an IgE-mediated cause of anaphylaxis even life-threatening. Venom Immunotherapy (VIT) is described as a highly effective treatment if administered at least for 3 years and therefore considered as life-saving. We retrospectively evaluated Venom Immunotherapy influence on total and specific IgE (sIgE) in a population of 21 Hymenoptera allergic patients referring to the Allergy Unit of Messina University Hospital, who had been screened for Hymenoptera allergy and resulted polysensitized to different Hymenoptera venoms, Apis, Vespula and Polistes venoms. Both total and specific IgE were monitored before and after 3-years of VIT with a single venom extract chosen according to history and grade of sensitization. Hymenoptera venom sIgE resulted significantly reduced not only for the venom extract used for VIT (P = 0.01) but also for the other Hymenoptera venoms and precisely Vespula sIgE showed a statistically significant decrease (P = 0.01) non only in patients treated with Vepula venom extract but also in patients treated with Apis mellifera extract while Apis mellifera sIgE levels showed a statistically significant decrease (P = 0.01) non only in patients treated with Apis mellifera venom but also in patients treated with Vespula venom extract. Therefore, VIT in our patients resulted effective in reducing overall Hymenoptera venom sensitization also in polysensitized patients.