Subcutaneous and sublingual immunotherapy and T regulatory cells: there is clinical relevance.

摘要

We read the paper of Eifan et al. [1] with great interest. These authors conducted an elegant study for comparing subcutaneous and sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) in allergic children, also evaluating clinical, functional, and immunological parameters. This study confirmed that SLIT was able to increase IL-10 production induced by the causal allergen, thus confirming previous studies reviewed recently [2]. However, they failed to demonstrate changes concerning Thl- and Th2-dependent cytokines. This fact might depend on several factors, such as the timing of observation after starting SLIT, the time of recovering supernatants after cell incubation, the dose of the stimulating allergen, the dose of the vaccine, and of course, the case-study characteristics. In fact, the study population investigated in this study seems to show singular features.