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Efficacy and safety of Artemisia annua sublingual immunotherapy in patients with seasonal allergic rhinoconjunctivitis over two pollen seasons

  • Rhinology
  • Published:
European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objective

This study investigates the efficacy and safety of sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) with A. annua allergens in patients with seasonal allergic rhinoconjunctivitis over two pollen seasons.

Methods

Seventy patients with moderate-severe seasonal allergic rhinoconjunctivitis were divided evenly into the SLIT and control groups. The SLIT last from 3 months before the summer-autumn pollen season in 2021 till the end of the summer-autumn pollen season in 2022. The daily individual symptom score, total rhinoconjunctivitis symptom score (dTRSS), total medication score (dTMS), combined score of medication and rhinoconjunctivitis symptom (dCSMRS), visual analog scale (VAS) score, and adverse events (AEs) were evaluated.

Results

The average pollen concentration in 2022 was twice that previous two-year during the pollen season. Fifty-six patients completed treatments (SLIT group: 29, control group: 27). Compared with baseline, the individual symptoms, dTRSS, dTMS, dCSMRS, and VAS scores of SLIT group declined in 2021. After 16 months of SLIT, all efficacy indexes in 2022 were still lower than baseline and equivalent to those in 2021. In control group, the efficacy indexes in 2022 were higher than that in 2020 and 2021. The efficacy indexes of SLIT group were lower than those of control group in 2021 and 2022. SLIT is effective for both mono- and poly-sensitized patients. AEs incidence in SLIT group was 82.7% without severe AEs.

Conclusions

The A. annua-SLIT can obtain efficacy and safety over two pollen seasons for patients with moderate-severe seasonal allergic rhinoconjunctivitis.

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Availability of supporting data

The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the study participants, coordinators, and investigators for their participation.

Funding

This study was supported by the Key Research and Development Projects of Shaanxi Province in the social development field (2020SF-020) and the General Program of Clinical Research of the First Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU1AF-CRF-2022–022).

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Author notes

  1. Jiayi Yang and Weidong Wang have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xian, 710061, China

    Jiayi Yang, Zhen Shen, Wei Kang, Pengfei Zhang, Xin Chen, Huajing Li, Yuan Shao, Lifeng Liu, Shaoqiang Zhang & Fang Quan

  2. Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, NO. 215 Hospital of Shaanxi Nuclear Industry, Xianyang, 710054, China

    Weidong Wang

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  1. Jiayi Yang
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Contributions

JY, WW, SZ, and FQ: designed the study and wrote the manuscript. WW and ZS: examined patients and critically reviewed the manuscript. WK, LL, and PZ: examined patients and analyzed data. XC, HL, and YS: collected the data and did the statistical analysis.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Shaoqiang Zhang or Fang Quan.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Ethical approval and consent to participate

Subjects (or their guardians) provided written consent to participate in the study. The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of The First Affiliated Hospital of Xian Jiaotong University, approval number (XJTU1AF2017LSY-12).

Human ethics

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee and written informed consent was obtained from all subjects before the study.

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We warrant that the article is original, does not infringe upon any copyright or other proprietary right of any third party, is not under consideration by another journal, and has not been previously published. The authors wrote the manuscript personally, and all authors have approved it and agreed to submit it to the Current Medical Science.

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Yang, J., Wang, W., Shen, Z. et al. Efficacy and safety of Artemisia annua sublingual immunotherapy in patients with seasonal allergic rhinoconjunctivitis over two pollen seasons. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 280, 4939–4947 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-023-08078-7

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