Allergen specific immunotherapy and COVID-19

Background: The COVID-19 infection played a key role in the discontinuation of patient treatment, such as allergen-specific immunotherapy, in chronic diseases.Objectives: We conducted a retrospective observational study at Verona University Hospital, Verona, Italy, to assess the level of adherence to sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) in patients affected by allergic rhinitis and mild asthma.Materials and Methods: We compared and analysed data related to first prescription and collection of 5-grass-pollen 300-index of reactivity (IR) SLIT and tablet lyophilisate, containing 75,000 standardized quality tablet units (SQ-T) allergen extract of grass-pollen from Phleum pratense L, for the five-year period 2017-2021.In particular we considered the group of naive patients from 2017 who completed pre-COVID treatment (2017-2019) and the group of naive patients from 2019 who completed treatment during the COVID period (2019-2021). The significance test used was Student's t-test, and P < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.Results: In the three-year period 2017-2019, 264 naive patients began treatment in 2017, of these 181 continued in 2018, 135 continued in 2019. Instead, for the period 2017-2019, there were 226 naive patients in 2019; of these 139 continued in 2020, and 102 in 2021.Conclusions: COVID-19 did not seem to influence adherence to SLIT, which declined independently even in during the pre-pandemic 3-year period. (c) 2023 Codon Publications. Published by Codon Publications.