Is AllergyEZ a validated treatment for allergies?

Question

My girlfriend is excited about an allergy treatment she's about to undergo. The product is sub-lingual allergy drops with the brand name "AllergyEZ." She's told me that her allergy doctor has told her that it is not FDA approved, but that it's been in use in Europe for decades and she's researched it and is confident that it is a good product.

The "not FDA approved" bit raises red flags to me as does the claim "but it's been used for decades;" these are key phrases I've heard for many snake oil products. My faith in this product isn't helped by the fact that a Google search for the brand name only yields links to the company's site, information relating to its domain name ownership, and links to doctors who support the product.

Have any of you heard of this type of allergy treatment or this particular brand? If so, how substantiated are their claims?

Answer 1

The warning flags:

• They have testimonials all over the place, but extremely little reference to any actual science.
• The "works for everything" claim is an eerily common trait in bogus medicine, and proportionally rare among real medication

  You won’t find a more comprehensive allergy serum! Your daily drops will fortify you against all the world’s major allergens. No matter where you travel or how your environment changes, you’ll be protected. ^{AllergyEZ.com}

• The science they do reference is a Cochrance Collaboration review, that examines whether or not sublingual immunotherapy is effective for treating allergic rhinitis. It does not specifically vindicate the efficacy of the product at hand as it:

  • Only examines the means of distributing the remedy. The fact that SLIT works at all does not validate one specific SLIT treatment.
  • Only looks at allergic rhinitis, whereas AllergyEZ claims to have a much broader scope, as mentioned above.

• No side effects! The kind of bold claims they're making on their website without backing evidence is the kind of confidence you can only have if you don't have an active ingredient at all. How could a rigorous trial have been performed that found no side effects? To my knowledge, no evidence based medicine available can match that claim.

  All-natural and extremely safe (not associated with dangerous anaphylactic reactions). ^{AllergyEZ for physicians}

  ...

  While most traditional allergy shot programs require participants to be at least 7 years old, AllergyEasy works safely and effectively for children of all ages—infants and up! ^{AllergyEZ for customers}

• The resources page includes some credible authorities on the subject, but visiting all of those sites, doing a search for "AllergyEZ" (except for pollen.com, where I did not easily find a search feature), yields no results at all. AllergyEZ lends credibility from other sources, that don't validate them at all.

• No coverage whatsoever about the product, except for that created by themselves. All search results are about the company of the same name, and nothing except for this very page covers the validity of the treatment.

• Another SLIT treatment called RevaiRx is suspiciously similar. The page indexed by Google says "How long will it take for patients to see results with Allergy EZ?", but the actual FAQ says the exact same thing, only "... results with RevaiRx":

  

  This appears to be a direct copy of the AllergyEZ press material, that Google indexed before they got around to even changing the product name. The two (supposedly) companies behind the different products share the same address in Stevensville, MT (RevaiRx, AllergyEz). It looks like they're trying to push the same product under different brand names. What's the rationale for doing that for a legitimate product?

Now, AllergyEZ.com was registered in October 2010, and RevaiRx in Jan 2011. This seems to be a rebranding issue, however. If you look at Allergyeasy.com (of which allergyez.com and myallergyeasy.com are mirrors), the website actually dates back to 2003. If we look at this brand name instead, there is at least some coverage:

The serum contains extracts of pollens, dust, molds, and pet danders in a saline solution. You will start with a very weak serum and over time you will gradually increase the concentration of the extracts. Your body will gradually tolerate higher concentrations of these extracts and you notice fewer allergy symptoms as the concentration of the extracts increases. ^{NW Integrative Medicine}

Also, Tacoma Naturopathic Care endorses Allergy Easy, citing the same "Endorsed by the World Health Organization as a viable, safe alternative to allergy shots", which is taken entirely out of context. The quote is not about Allergy Easy specifically but, just as with the Cochrane review, it only refers to SLIT in general:

_{(source: myallergyeasy.com)}

So there's an integrative medicine site and a naturopathy site endorsing AllergyEZ. That's all I've been able to find at the moment. Still no sight of scientific references that speficially put Allergy Easy on trial.

Answer 2

This is not an answer in itself, but it’s too big for a comment.

I just received a response from the company.

This is just as I received it, with the exception that I have removed names and the phone numbers included, I may add them later, once I am sure it won’t result in legal ramifications.

Thank you for recent visit to Revairx.com. We at Revairx are very excited about our product and what it can do to help your patients feel real, and permanent relief from their allergies and/or asthma. Revairx is 80% effective at treating patients with symptoms such as Eczema (including infants), conjunctivitis, rhinitis, animal allergies, headache, fatigue, chronic otitis, chronic sinusitis, chronic urticaria, etc... It is 90% effective with people suffering from asthma, and it is safe for all ages. Sublingual Immunotherapy has been around for over 100 years, and Revairx has been helping patients for over 25 years. I would love for the opportunity to speak to you live. Please feel free to call me on my cell phone [REMOVED] Thank you, [REMOVED] AllergyEZ Director of Sales and Marketing

Problems…

• All of the obvious ones.
• Lists a cell phone as a primary contact for the company.
• The last name of the person who is identified as director of sales and marketing is the same as that of the person listed as living at the house in Montana shown by google earth when searching for the company’s address.

It’s fair to say that my level of suspicion has gone way past merely “dubious” with regards to this product.

I will be in contact with these individuals in an attempt to seek further information.

I am suspecting that I will likely be bringing this product and its claims to the attention of the appropriate regulatory agencies in the very near future.

Answer 3

Is SLIT an effective treatment?

Their website has a FAQ which contains the following claim:

In the world-renowned Cochrane Review, a meta-analysis reviewed 22 studies involving 979 patients on sublingual immunotherapy and concluded that sublingual immunotherapy is a safe treatment which reduces symptoms and medication requirements in allergic rhinitis. SLIT is also endorsed by the World Health Organization and the ARIA (Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma) guidelines.

I did check and the Cochrane Review did find positive results:

We included a total of 60 randomised controlled trials in the review. Forty-nine were suitable for pooling in meta-analyses [...]. Overall, we found a significant reduction in symptoms (SMD -0.49; 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.64 to -0.34, P < 0.00001) and medication requirements (SMD -0.32; 95% CI -0.43 to -0.21, P < 0.00001) in participants receiving sublingual immunotherapy compared to placebo.

The active component of the product is serum, which I take to mean antiserum. Basically it is composed of the specific allergens tailored to one's particular allergies.

It is the same component used in subcutaneous injections and the therapy works based on the same science as those.

Sublingual immunotherapy is taken as drops or tablets, placed under the tongue 3 or more times/week, containing a specific allergen which interacts with the immune system to decrease allergic sensitivity.
—source

Is Allergy EZ a scam company?

I still have a big question on the validity of AllergyEz itself: the serum should be custom-made based on the patient allergies, however I see no mention of this in the site. It may just be a crap site (it is certainly not very good as it's raising more than one eyebrow).

Finally, other answers claim this product is a scam. This is a completely different matter. They may claim that the product is X and in fact sell you Y -- similar to herbal V14gr@. This may be, and I would be cautious of products that are not marketed through mainstream means.

I've been investigating this a bit further.

1. Just like Monkey Tuesday, I've also contacted the firm, see email here, [mirror for when mailinator purges it], [source for headers]

2. With some digging around I discovered this company: "ALLERGY EZ, L.L.C.", registered in Hawaii.

3. The manager of the company and the sales manager share the same surname. Are they related? Possibly yes.

4. REVAIRX, the original brand mentioned in the email, is actually a registered trademark, which is actually a good sign - although it proves nothing.

5. The trademark is registered to MILTON RAMSEY DOCTORS L.L.C. which is registered as a company in Mesa, AZ in the name of the same owner as ALLERGY EZ, L.L.C.. The interesting bit here is that it is registered as a domestic L.L.C.. [Articles of Organization].

6. The address of Milton Ramsey Doctors is also a house (possibly now a funeral home?).

7. Digging even further, more and more companies are appearing in Mesa (all with the same people, same signatures). See for example HORLACHER ACQUISITIONS, L.L.C.

So it is a family-owned business. It sounds quite fishy for a medical company, but I still don't have any proof that it is a scam, and I do think it could be either way for what I've found so far.