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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2005;294:2961.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

An edible vaccine against pollen allergies based on genetically modified rice reduced allergic responses in mice, suggesting such an approach could lead to safer and less expensive allergy therapy for humans, according to findings by Japanese scientists. The report appeared on October 31 in an early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Takagi et al. 2005, http://www.pnas.org).

The researchers genetically altered rice to produce peptides from cedar pollen proteins and tested the vaccine in mice that were allergic to the pollen. Compared with control mice, mice fed the rice vaccine daily for 4 weeks and exposed to cedar pollen had fewer allergic responses and allergen-specific antibodies and sneezed less.

Although the findings demonstrate the efficacy of the approach for inducing oral tolerance against pollen allergens, further work "will be required to extend our findings for . . . [Full Text of this Article]