The Molecular Biological Effects of Immunotherapy in the Nose

This is a controlled study with an intervention arm, and a control group of healthy volunteers. The population is composed of nonsmoking healthy adults and patients having birch or timothy pollen allergy with rhinoconjuctivitis symptoms and without other diseases. The diagnosis of pollen allergy is verified with positive history, skin prick test, and allergen specific IgE antibodies. Subjects undergo a spirometry with a bronchodilatator test and a histamine challenge. Quality of life and patient history data is collected by questionnaires. Four peripheral blood samples, as well as nasal cell swabs from nasal mucosa without local anesthesia are collected from each patient; in spring and winter before the group of the intervention arm starts with birch pollen subcutaneous immunotherapy; and during the first spring and winter when a subgroups has received the birch pollen immunotherapy. We plan to perform the following analyses for the nasal specimens: transcriptomics and their regulators, sequencing of 16SrRNA and RT-qPCR for assessing mucosal microbiome, mass spectrometry for analyses of proteins and protein-protein complexes, immunohistochemistry for tissue level localization and quantitation of proteins, in silico analyses for the data mining, integration and display. In addition we observe the alterations in inflammatory mediators after in vitro allergen activation of purified peripheral blood leukocytes by ELISA and real time qPCR.