Can I Develop Allergies to Reptile or Amphibian? The Answer is actually yes!

Ideally it isn't fair to say that immunotherapy (allergy shots) is ineffective, or a waste of ones time. In contrast this is not true. Immunotheraputics have been used with great successful in a number of individuals, but given our limited understanding of the immune system it is not without some margin of error, or failure of success. In more severe cases, where immunotherapy is unsuccessful, immunosupressive therapy may be of use and has been used for the short term treatment of severe allergic reactions to vaccines, as well as for long term therapy applied to individuals with autoimmune disease.

As of right now these are the major therapoutic modalities available In addition to the practice of dietary modification, feeding trials, exclusion diets, etc.

In most cases, it is easier to remove the inciting cause of an allergic reaction than it is to treat the symptoms once an allergic reaction has developed.

As for immune hypersensitivity, one of the current treatment modalities would by that of immunotherapy where the goal of therapy is desensitization. To achieve this, the patient is subjected to intradermal skin testing where bleb injections are administered beneith the skin containing antigens that have been isolated from a variety of substances, some of which may be known to cause clinical signs of hypersensitivity in that individual. Positive and negative controls are also applied concurrently. Once administered, a given period of time is allowed to elapse and the bleps that form on the surface of the skin are then measured to see if swelling has occurred as a result of allergic inflammation.

Once the eliciting substances have been identified, vaccines are prepared for subcutaneous injection containing the same antigens which have been diluted so much, that the concentration present is not high enough to elicit a strong/dangerous immune reaction. These vaccines are then administered over a given period of time and the concentration within the vaccine is gradually increased as time progresses. Doing so allows the hosts immune system time to develop a tolerance to the antigens. As the concentration of the antigen contained increases, so does the bodies tolerance to that antigen, until the individual becomes so tolerant that they no longer react when exposed to the antigen that previously caused an allergic reaction.

Many vaccines also can and sometimes do cause reactions in people, as well as animals. So how do we vaccinate someone who reacts to the vaccine they are given? For these individuals we often employ preventative therapy with short acting anti-histamines, steroids and immune modulators. These must be given to the patient before exposure to a given allergy stimulus to preventative the onset of a reaction. These reactions can be life threatening and should be considered a medical emergency.

In veterinary medicine, immune modulators such a azathioprine, cyclosporins and other drugs such as corticosteroids have been used to control SEVERE allergic reactions. These agents however are reserved only for severe cases of immune hypersensitivity and autoimmune disease and should only be used by a medical doctor or a veterinarian.

The mainstay of allergy therapy ultimately, is the exclusion of the inciting stimulus +/- immunotherapy if desired by the patient. This can be very challenging for the patient as well as difficult to achieve. In veterinary medicine we often use feeding trials, or dietary exclusion to identify food allergens, though we do have serology and intradermal testing available to us.

If we are faced with a patient who has a history of vaccine reactions, we will often treat that patient pre-emptively using short acting drugs to prevent an immediate reaction. If the stimulus is something continuous that cannot be removed such as the case with autoimmune disease, we then turn to the use of immune modulators to quiet the affects of the immune system.

I have return to work for now, but later I will post more about allergies in general and followed by an explanation of how it applies to herps.

This is a very educational and informative thread.

Thank you for sharing this information with us, Jason.

With respect to immune hypersensitivities, there are between four to five different types of hypersensitivity reactions. When we consider reptiles or amphibians as a cause of allergic reactions, we are concerning ourselves with type I immune hypersensitivity reactions specifically, which happen to be mediated by the immune protein IgE. The antibody IgE is one of the immune system modulators responsible for allergic reactions and is active during parasite infestations as well. IgE binds to the antigens present on the surface of biologically active foreign material. The antigen-antibody complex then behaves like a switch capable of activating eosinophils, mast cells, basophils and other immune constituents that trigger the immune response, giving rise to the gross appearance of allergies.

When determining the cause of allergies, intradermal testing and serology may be employed depending on the antigen/antigens of interest. Allergy therapy is tailored to the needs of the individual based on the severity and types of symptoms observed and may include the use of dietary modification by exclusion, feeding trials, environmental modification, Immunotherapy, or possibly the use of drugs such as antihistamines, steroids and immune modulators in severe cases.