(ANSA) – ROME – For allergic people, the vaccine can be a salvation, but of the 6 million allergic Italians who could benefit from it – out of a total of 12 million – only 2% opt for the administration, also due to the lack of reimbursement in several regions.
A “paradox”, say allergists, which exposes people to high risks and represents a significant cost to the National Health Service.
For this reason, on the occasion of the congress of the Italian Society of Allergology, Asthma and Clinical Immunology (Siaaic) in Bologna, specialists ask that the health problem of allergies, today “trivialized”, become a priority on the political agenda. .
In Italy, specific immunotherapy, that is, the vaccine, remains a pipe dream for millions of patients, although international guidelines indicate it as the best therapy for one in two allergy sufferers, both for respiratory allergies and insect bites. . In fact, it is the only treatment capable of stopping the escalation of inflammatory symptoms that lead to asthma, a disease that in Italy, in the most serious cases, causes almost 300 victims each year.
Nowadays, the use of the vaccine is strongly limited especially by costs, because in most regions (practically the entire central and southern part) this treatment is entirely borne by the patients, with a cost of 500/ 600 euros a year. Ignorance of allergic diseases and the lack of an adequate healthcare network also weighs heavily.
However, the spread of allergies is continually increasing. According to the WHO, approximately 350 million people in the world suffer from respiratory allergies. There are more than 1,000 deaths a day from asthma worldwide, around 300 a year in Italy, many of which could be avoided if patients received effective treatment.
The prediction is that by 2050 almost half of the population will suffer from some type of allergy, thanks to climate change and pollution. In Italy approximately 10% of children under 14 years of age suffer from asthma and 80% of these are allergic. The direct costs of asthma represent between 1 and 2% of Italian healthcare spending.
Immunotherapy with specific allergens, or vaccine, is “a desensitizing therapy that can really change the course of the disease – explains Mario Di Gioacchino, president of Siaaic -. It consists of progressively increasing doses of the allergen to which the patient is sensitized. In this way In this way, an active immune tolerance develops, with the production of protective antibodies against the allergen itself (ANSA).
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2023-10-29 15:18:00
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