The growing importance of real-life studies in allergen immunotherapy.

Summary: Real-life studies offer the opportunity of obtaining outcomes suitable in clinical practice, as controlled trials do not mirror the real patients' population observed in clinical practice. This concept is particularly appropriate for allergen immunotherapy (AIT). Therefore, the current review will present and discuss the most recent and relevant studies published on this topic. Globally, 15 real-life studies on AIT efficacy are available until now, the total of patients amounts to 9090, with an average number of 699 patients per study. This high number significantly decrease the possibility that the observations from real-life study are casual, and confers to such studies a key role in the next years to assess issues other than efficacy and safety, especially those scantly investigated thus far.