Additional Questions
Yes! Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) can absolutely be used to treat multiple food allergies at the same time. This is known as Multi-Allergen Oral Immunotherapy (mOIT).
If you or your child is allergic to peanuts, cashews, and milk, they do not have to wait years to treat them one by one.
Here is how managing multiple food allergies with OIT works:
🤝 How Multi-Allergen OIT Works
The program begins with a single allergen. Once a maintenance dose is achieved, we may be able to introduce a second allergen while continuing the maintenance of the first.
The Combined Dose: Once maintenance is achieved, we may be able to mix together the microscopic amounts of your target allergens. The patient takes this single, combined dose once a day.
Independent Progression: If your body tolerates the peanut increase beautifully but gets a mild stomach ache from the milk, our clinic can pause or lower just the milk dose while continuing to move forward with the peanut dose. Your plan is entirely customized.
🌟 The Benefits of Multi-Allergen OIT
Comprehensive Peace of Mind: Accidental cross-contamination in restaurants or schools rarely involves just one specific allergen. Protecting against all of your major triggers provides true, comprehensive safety.
🩺 Is Multi-Allergen OIT Right for You?
While highly effective, treating multiple allergens simultaneously requires careful planning. During your consultations at PURE Allergy & Asthma, we will review your allergy test results, history of reactions, and lifestyle goals to determine the safest and most efficient path forward for your family.
Yes, absolutely! You can receive allergy shots (Subcutaneous Immunotherapy or SCIT) and undergo Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) at the same time. In fact, doing both simultaneously is quite common and can be highly beneficial.
PURE Allergy & Asthma is also very proud to be the only allergist in Bucks County to offer Rapid Immunotherapy. Through this process, you can achieve maintenance in just a few short weeks, compared to the traditional route that takes over a year. This process has you feeling better quickly, and can save you over 100 visits to the doctors office over the full course of treatment. Find out more here.
Here is how the two treatments interact and why your allergist might recommend managing them together:
1. Controlling Environmental Allergies Actually Makes OIT Safer: Before you can safely start OIT for a food allergy, your immune system needs to be as stable as possible. If you are constantly suffering from uncontrolled asthma, severe hay fever, or seasonal allergies, your body is already in a state of high inflammation. Being on allergy shots helps quiet down that environmental background noise. By desensitizing your body to pollen, dust mites, or pet dander, allergy shots help lower your baseline allergic reactivity, making your daily OIT food doses safer and easier to tolerate.
2. They Target Completely Different Triggers: Because allergy shots and OIT treat entirely separate issues, they do not interfere with each other's effectiveness: Allergy Shots treat environmental allergens (grass, trees, weeds, dust mites, mold, pet dander, etc). OIT treats food allergens (peanuts, tree nuts, milk, egg, wheat, etc).
⚠️ Important Rules for Managing Both Simultaneously: Consult with your doctor! While you can do both, your clinical team will give you specific safety protocols to manage the daily routine:
Stagger Your Doses: You should never take your daily at-home OIT food dose right before or right after getting your allergy shots at the clinic. Your allergist will likely recommend separating them by several hours to ensure your immune system isn't overwhelmed all at once.
The Post-Shot Rest Period: Just like with your allergy shots, you must observe a strict "rest period" (no rigorous exercise, hot showers, or overheating) for a speecific period after taking an OIT dose.
Communicate Symptom Flares: If you are having a rough seasonal allergy day or an asthma flare-up, you may need to adjust your OIT dosing schedule for that day.
Always work closely with our office to coordinate your appointment schedules and daily dosing times to ensure both therapies work safely hand-in-hand.
No. At PURE Allergy & Asthma, we do not typically require the use of expensive biologics with unknown long-term side effects to treat multiple food allergies. Our clinical focus is on helping you or your child build natural, lasting immunity safely through structured OIT alone. However, in certain situations, a biologic may help you with your treatment plan. Dr. Dhawan will carefully review your plan with you to see if any additional medications are necessary.
When managing a diagnosed food allergy, patients and parents typically have three primary paths to choose from. At PURE Allergy & Asthma, we help you evaluate these options to find the safest, most effective fit for your family's lifestyle.
-> Allergen Avoidance and Education: The traditional approach to food allergy management involves strict avoidance of the allergen, careful label reading, and emergency preparedness with an epinephrine auto-injector. While necessary, avoidance alone does not lower the underlying risk of severe reactions from accidental exposure.
-> Oral Immunotherapy (OIT): The leading proactive food allergy treatment designed to safely retrain the immune system. By introducing microscopic, gradually increasing doses of the allergen under strict medical supervision, OIT builds long-term tolerance. Unlike passive management paths, OIT actively works to give patients true peace of mind, enabling them to achieve "bite-proof" safety or even freely eat the foods they once feared.
->Biologic Therapies: Advanced medical treatments, such as FDA-approved biologics, can be used to help decrease the body's overreactive allergic response. These are sometimes paired with other treatments to provide a temporary layer of protection against accidental ingestion. However, biologics typically require ongoing monthly injections and must be continued for life to maintain protection. These medications are also a significant long-term financial commitment, ranging from $1,500 to $3,000 per month on average.
At PURE Allergy & Asthma, we typically avoid requiring the use of biologics with unknown long-term side effects, preferring instead to focus on building natural, lasting immunity through OIT. However, we understand that for certain individuals who are simply unable to commit to the daily routine and strict safety protocols of an OIT program, biologic therapy can serve as an alternative option for managing severe food allergy risks. We are happy to provide this option to patients who would best benefit from this level of protection.
While STAR OIT can lead to significant desensitization and increased tolerance, it is not considered an official "cure" for food allergies. In many cases, patients will be able to tolerate bite proof or even free eating of the foods they were once allergic to. It will require continued daily maintenance dose of the allergen to maintain their level of tolerance. OIT can provide a significant level of protection and freedom.
At PURE Allergy & Asthma, we strive to provide transparent pricing for our Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) programs. Because every patient's immune system is unique, the exact cost of food allergy treatment depends on your specific personalized treatment plan, the number of allergens being treated, and your ultimate end goal, whether that is achieving "bite-proof" safety or freely eating. While we work diligently to help you maximize your benefits, insurance policies and coverage details fluctuate, and PURE Allergy & Asthma does not control insurance company approvals or plan changes. We recommend contacting your insurance directly to verify your specific benefits for allergy desensitization codes, and our team is always here to provide the necessary documentation to help make the process as smooth as possible.
Insurance:
Insurance typically covers the majority of your in-office appointments. We are in-network with almost all Commercial Carriers, and Medicare.
Medicaid: Please note that we are not in-network with Medicaid. If you carry Medicaid as either your primary or secondary insurance, you will be financially responsible for any portion of your bill that is not covered by your primary commercial policy.
Cash Pay: PURE Allergy & Asthma offers a cash-pay option. Because pricing depends entirely on your customized treatment path, we recommend scheduling an initial new patient appointment first. This allows us to thoroughly evaluate your allergies and provide you with an accurate, transparent cost estimate.
What is not covered by insurance:
-> One time program fee: There is a one-time, nominal fee to cover the lifetime cost of materials, preparation of your dose prior to each escalation, and escalated access to our allergy staff. This fee covers the cost of all materials and ingredients for your OIT at home doses as well.
-> Remaking of OIT doses at home: Should you lose, damage, or accidentally destroy your at home OIT doses, a small fee may be required to re-make the at home doses.
-> Blood work (only if required): In most cases, blood work is not covered by insurance. Most patients contact Quest or Labcorp to understand these costs, and patients have reported it is generally very reasonable.
