What is it like to have food allergies, asthma, or nasal allergies? What do patients need and want from their treatments? How can we improve allergy care?

The chief executive officer of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America spoke about these issues at a recent FDA advisory committee meeting.

Dr. Cary Sennett spoke to the Allergenic Products Committee about the everyday challenges of life with food allergies, asthma and other allergies.

Dr. Sennett attended the meeting to represent patients’ perspectives about treatments and care. He emphasized that the allergy community needs and wants treatments that are:

Safe. Food allergy therapies need to be tested in a controlled environment.
Effective. This means the treatment works in the real world and in a patient’s day-to-day life, not just in clinical trials.
Better. Patients and families need improved treatments from what is currently available.

Advisory committees, such as the Allergenic Products Committee, make recommendations to the FDA on which new treatments to approve. The FDA is not required to take their advice, but usually does. The committee was not meeting about a specific product. Instead, it met to discuss how to best create studies for the development of food allergen immunotherapy and immunotherapy to prevent asthma.

AAFA is excited to work with the FDA to improve allergy care and treatments by bringing the voice of the allergy and asthma community into the research process.

Click here to review the information Dr. Sennett shared with the FDA.