The DBV Technologies website should offer hope to any parent who’s having to deal with the consequences of a child with an allergy. Many youngsters and babies suffer considerable distress as a result of various allergies – some allergies can even be fatal. This, naturally enough, also causes tremendous worry for their parents. In the past, the cure has sometimes seemed worse than the condition, at least from the point of view of kids frightened of injections, or parents concerned about the risk of anaphylactic shock stemming from this approach.
Now, however, DBV-Technologies have devised a different way of tackling this issue. The Viaskin patch, which is being developed to treat peanut, house dust mite and cows’ milk protein (http://www.dbv-technologies.com/en/viaskin-products/viaskin-milk) allergies is completely pain-free and non-invasive. This technology has adopted an epicutaneous immunotherapy strategy, meaning that the blood/skin barrier is not broken at any time. The cornerstone of this new approach lies in the location of the Langerhans’ cells, the body’s most tolerogenic cells, in the epidermis. Minute quantities of allergens are transmitted to these cells from the Viaskin patch, enabling the body to become ‘desensitized’ in a much safer way than through the injection of allergens directly into the bloodstream..
