Another Grass Pollen Pill Wins Approval

Grastek, a once-daily tablet that helps allergy suffers develop a resistance to their grass-pollen allergy was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last Friday, making Grastek the second immunotherapy treatment of its kind to earn federal approval.

Merck & Co. had developed the immotherapy drug in a collaboration with Denmark's ALK Abello and had announced the product's approval on Monday.

This will make Grastek the second dissolvable immunotherapy tablet to be made available in the U.S., the first being French drug company Stallergenes' Oralair, which was approved for sale in the U.S. at the start of this month.

Much like Oralair, Grastek is a immunotherapy treatment option for allergy sufferers that can be taken home. In the form of a dissolvable pill that is place under the tongue, Grastek is designed to expose people suffering from grass-pollen allergies to small doses of extract of the timothy grass allergen.

Unlike with conventional allergy pills, which contain anti-histamines and other ingredients that aid the body in fighting the symptoms of allergies -- such as sneezing, watery eyes, and swelling throat -- immunotherapy treatments directly address the source of the problem, exposing the body to regular doses of allergens until the body becomes less sensitive to the them.

Prior to the approval or Oraliar and Grastek, the only immunotherapy options available to allergy sufferers was in the form of weekly or bi-weekly injections, requiring patients to visit certified clinics to receive their injections.

Now, these dissolvable tablets allow patients to administer their own immunotherapy regimen via a prescription, allowing for convenience and comfort.

Still, as things stands, both treatments only address grass pollen allergies, meaning that the symptoms of food, dust, and various other pollen allergies still have to be treated with shots or antihistamines.

The FDA approved Grastek on April 11. Merek announced the approval of the medication in a press release on April 14.