Influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the prescription and adherence to allergen-specific immunotherapyDear Editor, After almost 2 years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, very few articles have published the actual impact of the pandemic on the prescription of allergen immunotherapy (AIT). Recently, Rodriguez Del Rio et al. 1 published a report on the management of AIT during the COVID-19 outbreak in France and Spain, based on a retrospective survey conducted among physicians prescribing AIT from 4 October 2020 to 4 November 2020. In this report, they observed a significant reduction in the number of new AIT courses during the lockdown (75%) and in the post-lockdown period (50%) (mean reduction in both periods 62.5%), as well as changes in qualitative prescribing patterns, in favour of sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT). These findings differ from the results of a retrospective analytical observational real-life study performed by our group in the same period (October and November 2020). The aim of our study was to analyse with real-life data whether pandemic-derived restrictions interfered with the prescription and initiation of treatment with AIT. Our study included 446 patients from the Allergology Unit of the University Hospital of Fuenlabrada who were prescribed the initiation of AIT in the period between 1 March 2020 and 30 September 2020 (pandemic period, including lockdown and post-lockdown
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