There is little point in identifying allergies to biological inhalants, food or chemicals if the patient cannot either avoid them or be desensitized to them. Allergies, for example, to dust mites, moulds and pollens can only really be successfully avoided by emigration to hot dry climates, which for most people is quite impractical. Patients who are allergic or intolerant to 8 or 10 major foods find it totally to avoid these on a long-term basis and so although we may understand the cause of their problems, an approach that does not contain a technique of desensitization can be quite worthless.

Intradermal provocation neutralization skin testing is both a diagnostic facility and a treatment rolled into one. It can provide patients with dramatic improvements in their problems without the need to take extreme measures in terms of avoiding foods or inhaled sensitivities.

Prior to the development of neutralization treatment, the technique known as incremental desensitization had a bad name with both doctors and patients in that it was time consuming and ineffective. The patient was given increasing doses of items in which they were highly sensitive and each desensitizing injection gave them ever stronger and stronger reactions. Frequently the treatment had to be abandoned because of these reactions and the overall success rate for all year round type allergies was only about 15%. The success rate for food allergies was so low that it was rarely even tried. Our biggest single problem at the Burghwood Clinic is that most physicians know so little about recent developments in allergy treatment, and many think that this is the technique we would use. Anyone using such a useless form of desensitization would, in my view, not last more than a few months in private practice.

In contrast neutralization treatment is effective in over 80% of patients with food allergy and intolerance, and biologically inhaled allergies such as dust, dust mites, animal furs and pollens. It is also very effective in protecting people against chemical sensitivities such as petrol, diesel, perfumes, gas, etc. This protection is normally afforded within a few hours or days. This technique has been used extensively in America since 1970, and by Dr Mansfield since 1978 at an average of 60 test sessions a week. An extremely conservative estimate is that over 30 million people worldwide have benefited from this treatment, and there has not been one fatality. This is not surprising as the dose of allergen given is very low.

• The dose is the strongest allergen that produces a negative skin reaction. This strength is known as the neutralization strength.
• If symptoms are provoked at a higher strength than the neutralization dose, then the neutralizing dose will turn off the symptoms occasioned by the stronger strength. Thus the desensitization dose is tailor made to each person's individual needs and produces a completely negative response on the skin.
• In practice these treatment doses are very dilute. For example the most common neutralizing doses of house dust mite are the 4th, 5th or 6th concentration. The 4th concentration is a 1 in 625 dilution of the solution from the allergy supply companies. The 5th concentration is a 1 in 3125 dilution and the 6th concentration is a 1 in 15625 dilution.
  

It is, therefore, not at all surprising that patients are able to give these concentrations to themselves without any problems at all. The Committee on Safety in Medicine accept that this procedure is totally different to incremental desensitization, and state that their strictures in regard to the use of incremental desensitization do not apply to our totally different technique.

The patient is given, for treatment purposes, a cocktail of his/her neutralizing concentrations that can then be self-administered by a single subcutaneous injection given on alternate days, or by sublingual drops given three times a day. Patients need to take the treatment for about eighteen months for inhalant sensitivity, or three years for food sensitivity before they can inhale or eat these allergens safely without the protection of their neutralization treatment.

A problem found by some patients with neutralization therapy is that their neutralizing levels may change after several weeks or months as they become less sensitive. The signal that this is happening is that the patient begins to notice a reoccurrence of the original symptoms. These symptoms are rarely as bad as the original presenting symptoms. Retesting and adjusting the neutralization levels appropriately usually resolves the problem almost immediately. Patients with straightforward allergies have little problem with changing levels. Patients with complex allergies and unstable immune systems have more problems in this respect.

There are over 25 studies validating the use of this technique, 6 of which are mentioned in the Clinical Trials section.