Allergy shots include the small amounts of the allergen, given in such doses as to allow the immune system to build a tolerance to the allergen. [0][1] It reminds me of psychology's "exposure therapy". [2] In layman's terms, allergy shots teach the immune system to chill, whereas this "inverse vaccine" (as I understand it) deletes a substance from the immune system's memory.
In less layman's terms from someone that is still a layman - isn't it less akin to exposure therapy and more that it modulates the immune response from one type to another (IgE to IgG4), the second response being less associated with the traditional symptoms of allergies but for which we are not entirely sure what the full impacts are? In other words the body still responds abnormally but with a different mechanism. Furthermore we aren't entirely sure why high levels of exposure shift the response from one IG to another?
Oh! I honestly have no idea because that isn't something I noticed in my admittedly shallow research. But you've given me some great questions to ask my allergist next week. Thanks!
Yes, the approach in the article is very similar. The difference is that the antigen is tagged with molecules that heighten the recognition of the antigen as “self”.