May 8, 2008 Carbon dioxide may treat your allergies Play video

(NECN/ABC) - Allergy season is here and along with your hay fever, you may be experiencing the annoying side effects of today's drugs. But, a new treatment for allergies, with fewer side effects, might come from the same substance blamed for global warming: carbon dioxide.

Tom Casale, Creighton University School of Medicine: "It is a little bit of a strange idea when you think about it. It's in a higher concentration than you would normally exhale. And it's in a more rapid flow."

Casale is chief of allergy and immunology at Creighton. He's leading clinical trials to test whether flowing carbon dioxide gas through peoples' noses can reduce their allergy miseries. In an early study published in the "Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology," people with allergies randomly received either the CO2 treatment or plain air. The results with CO2 were promising and had fewer side effects than current treatments.

Casale says testing will soon begin on a portable prototype he hopes will get FDA approval.

ABC's Sunita Reed takes a closer look.