Retrospective cohort study reveals higher maintenance doses correlate with lower pollen-specific IgE ratios in children, indicating a potential dose-dependent immunological response.
Key Points
To assess how maintenance dose, cumulative dose, injection interval, and treatment duration correlate with changes in Japanese cedar pollen-specific IgE during pediatric subcutaneous immunotherapy.
Conducted a retrospective cohort study of 58 children aged 5 to 15 years receiving standardized Japanese cedar pollen subcutaneous immunotherapy for at least 2 years.
Evaluated associations between treatment parameters and the log10-transformed post- to pre-treatment specific IgE ratio using Spearman rank correlation with Benjamini-Hochberg adjustment.
Median specific IgE changed from 94.7 to 84.0 UA/mL (P = 0.013), with a median post-/pre-treatment ratio of 1.42 and only 36.2% of children (21/58) having a ratio below 1.0.
Maintenance dose (rho = −0.394, adjusted P = 0.004) and annual cumulative dose (rho = −0.405, adjusted P = 0.004) showed modest inverse correlations with specific IgE ratios.
Injection interval (rho = 0.084) and treatment duration (rho = −0.008) showed no clear association with IgE ratios, and no systemic allergic reactions occurred during maintenance.