Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at jh.edu.

That's Public Health Question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith-Rogers, and today our topic is Zolair, the first FDA-approved therapy for food allergies.

I talk with Dr. Robert Wood, the director of pediatric allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins,

about this treatment which can prevent severe and life-threatening reactions in adults and children

who have common allergies like tree nuts, eggs, and milk. Let's listen.

Dr. Wood, thank you so much for being on public health on call. Today, we're talking about

Zolair. What is Zolair and how does it work? So Zolair is a drug in the sort of the class of

biologics where you are using an antibody to block some part of the immune system.

And Zolair specifically blocks a type of antibody called IGE.

And if somebody develops allergy, it's because their immune system has started to produce

IGEE against one or more allergens.

So, for example, if you have a cat allergy, I could measure your IG to cat.

If you had a peanut allergy, we could do the same for peanut. And Zolair is also referred to as

anti-IGEE, so it literally blocks the IG molecules in that individual patient, such that they

cannot lead to the kind of allergic reaction that they're intended to lead to.

So how's it being used now?

So it's an old drug. It's been used for 21 years to treat asthma.

And a couple of their allergic conditions in the meantime, like chronic hives are approved for that.

And we've had a sense for a long time, the number of studies that we and others have done,

...