Patients with crusted scabies typically respond poorly to conventional topical chemotherapy such as 5% permethrin, selleck compound therefore immunotherapy similar to that currently used for allergic skin disorders, such as the administration of allergen extracts, may offer a better alternative (89). Allergen immunotherapy is indicated for patients with demonstrated specific IgE antibodies against clinically relevant allergens (90).

Allergen immunotherapy involves the administration of gradually increasing quantities of specific allergens to patients until a dose is reached that is effective in reducing the severity of disease from natural exposure. The aims are to redirect an inappropriate immune response against allergens or autoantigens with the help of a range of suppressor mechanisms, and include reducing the inflammatory response and preventing development of persistent ICG-001 disease in the long term. An alternate method is to produce modified

hypoallergenic derivatives of recombinant allergens with reduced likelihood of adverse effects. Another promising approach incorporates immunotherapy with T-cell peptide epitopes. Short allergen-derived synthetic peptides can induce T-cell anergy and have been shown to inhibit T-cell function and are unable to cross-link IgE to cause anaphylaxis. Vaccines designed to directly target the scabies mite are also a possibility especially in the light Fenbendazole of the partial success of a vaccine for

the cattle tick Boophilus microplus (91,92) and approaches to a vaccine for P. ovis (93,94) Development of vaccines, immunotherapeutics and immunodiagnostics represents a promising long-term strategy to control scabies in endemic Indigenous communities in northern Australia and other affected communities elsewhere in the world. However, a comprehensive understanding of the localized immune response in the skin is critical to target the response away from pathology to immunity. Newly developed vaccines for other diseases on occasion have been shown to cause detrimental effects, especially in diseases where the basic biological processes are unresolved (e.g. early rheumatic fever vaccine). DNA vaccines consist of plasmid vectors with genes that encode allergens. DNA vaccines express antigens in vivo and thus can access the MHC-I pathway for presenting antigen to antigen presenting cells and induce Th1 type immune response (95). This vaccine approach in animal models has been shown to significantly decrease Th2-mediated responses, enhance Th1-mediated responses, and suppress the allergic response (96). Although still in the early stages of development, with a number of challenges to overcome, this concept has potential to be applied to the development of safe and specific DNA vaccines for prophylaxis and therapy of crusted scabies. Understanding the immunology of scabies is still in its infancy.