Allergy seasons are getting longer and more intense

ABC NEWS (Australia)

With more pollen in the air, you might be battling symptoms like itchy and watery eyes, sneezing or a runny nose. Professor Janet Davies from the Queensland university of Technology discusses what triggers an allergy and how to treat it.

Transcript

00:00Well, it happens when your immune system becomes sensitized to things that are normally harmless

00:07and your body then makes a particular type of antibodies we call IgE.

00:12If you've got those antibodies to something that you're allergic to, like pollens, then

00:19you can subsequently have an allergic reaction and that's the mast cells inside your body

00:25that is firing off histamine and other inflammatory mediators.

00:31What are the most common and effective treatments?

00:35So obviously the antihistamine is one of the mediators.

00:39If histamine is one of the mediators, sorry, then taking antihistamine can help relieve

00:44symptoms and most people will reach for the antihistamines.

00:49But in fact, if you've got moderate to severe allergies, including hay fever, then you

00:55really want to be controlling the underlying inflammation that's driving that, which means

01:00you should be looking at using an intranasal corticosteroid, for instance.

01:05So I recommend people who are having troubles with the hay fever that they talk to their

01:10pharmacist and if they need to, go and see their general practitioner for a proper assessment

01:16testing and possibly a referral to a specialist.

01:19Is there anything that people can do to relieve seasonal allergies permanently?

01:25There is a treatment that provides long-term protection and that is allergen immunotherapy

01:32and that is initiated by an allergy specialist where you can receive small doses and increasing

01:39levels to become training your immune system not to fire off, to train your immune system

01:45to tolerate the allergens that you're allergic to.

01:49I know that food allergies around the world are on the rise.

01:54Is that the case too for spring or seasonal allergies as well?

01:58Yes, unfortunately is, particularly in Australia.

02:02So the 2022 National Health Survey showed that we had a one point, sorry, one point,

02:09sorry, it's Sunday morning, I'm getting all my words mixed up.

02:13We've got a one and a half fold increase.

02:15So three times as many people with hay fever from 2001 to 2022.

02:22So around 23.8% of people report having hay fever in Australia at the moment, which is

02:29a high burden.

02:30That's almost, you know, one in four people.

02:34And when we talk about, you know, itchy and watery eyes or runny nose, it might seem trivial.

02:39But for someone who works with people who have these seasonal allergies, how debilitating

02:44can they be for people?

02:46Look, they have a significant effect on your health and your quality of life.

02:51And people will often trivialise hay fever, but it is associated with other conditions,

02:58respiratory allergic conditions like having asthma, like having sleep apnea, ear infections.

03:07It can affect the quality of your sleep and the performance of your when you're working

03:13or when you're at school.

03:14So it's not an insignificant problem.

03:18And it's one that really you should pay attention to and see if you can talk to your pharmacist

03:24in the first instance, perhaps if you can't get to see a doctor or a specialist.

03:29But if you have troubling symptoms that bother you a lot, then you really should try and

03:35see a medical professional and get that properly diagnosed and managed.

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