Ashwini P. Reddy, MD

Ashwini Reddy, MD, sees patients with a wide spectrum of allergic responses to a variety of triggers. What keeps her interested isn’t a particular condition or allergen: it’s seeing her patients’ lives improve.

Allergies and asthma can make commonplace, everyday activities a source of danger and anxiety for her patients, and Dr. Reddy relishes the sense of removing roadblocks to healthy, fulfilling experiences.

“I guess what makes this exciting for me is seeing the change in patients, whether it’s being able to eat foods they’ve missed out on, participating in sports, or just playing outside. I love hearing what’s changed in their life after treatment,” Dr. Reddy says.

Dr. Reddy is encouraged by advances in allergy and immunology that allow for increasingly customized treatments.

“The personalized part of medicine where we are able to tailor medications based on the patient’s presentation is exciting,” she says, “particularly in the allergy field, where there are so many innovative treatments coming out.”

Seeing “a broad range of diseases including drug and food allergy, asthma, hives, and so on” keeps Dr. Reddy on her toes.

Dr. Reddy has been published on treatment guidelines for asthma, a field she finds rewarding. “You can take a patient who is struggling and see how their life is transformed after treatment,” she says. “There are many new therapies for asthma and it’s an exciting time for patients to have so many options available.”

Another area of particular interest is food allergies.

“Food allergy is interesting because you can see an arc of how the patient presents and it hopefully ends with them outgrowing it!” she says.

For patients with severe and persistent food allergies they don’t outgrow, CHOP offers oral immunotherapy. Dr. Reddy is contributing to the increasing effectiveness of this approach by contributing to research in food desensitization.

Whatever the particulars of their medical challenges, Dr. Reddy is certain that the foundation of a successful treatment is listening carefully to patients and their caregivers.

“I want people to take away the feeling that their concerns were heard and we were able to create a clear plan for the next steps,” Dr. Reddy says.