A reasonable plan is to continue immunotherapy until a patient has been free of symptoms for at least one full year. When this occurs, we simply discontinue immunotherapy, and we have found that a large percentage of patients will not need to resume allergy shots. In general, we do not recommend a move. Asthmatic persons who live in low damp areas such as certain parts of the East and whose problem is complicated by recurrent infections or mold sensitivity may benefit from the warm, dry climate of parts of the Southwest. However, there is no guarantee that sensitivities to new allergens will not develop.
Patients often try a new area to determine whether the asthma improves while there.
The result of a short visit is not a reliable indication of how a person will feel when he actually moves there, however. On a visit, he leaves behind his emotional as well as his physical milieu. After about a year in a new locale, an allergic person tends to become sensitized to the allergens prevalent in the new environment and symptoms return. There is no way to predict when asthma will first occur. A person with asthma generally inherited a susceptibility to it.