From the discomfort of a runny nose to the life-threatening emergency of full-blown anaphylactic shock, allergy symptoms range. The same person can have different symptoms to different allergic triggers, the specific allergens. The allergy reaction is always an immune system response that is triggered by antibodies in the body reacting with an antigen, the allergen; chemicals reacting at the cellular level.

What makes an allergy an allergy? If the immune system responds to a substance that is not really harmful or is not usually attacked by by the immune systems of most people, then we say the person has an allergy to that substance. If the substance, the antigen, were a chemical associated with a fungal, bacterial, or viral organism, then the immune responses to the antigen chemical would be part of the cluster of symptoms used the diagnose the disease. The body's battle against the disease would explain some of the fever, runny nose, nausea, vomiting, aches, pains and general misery of being sick. With medicine and time, the body should, hopefully, overcome the disease and get well.

But in an allergy, the exposure to the antigen, now called allergen to identify it as a non-pathogenic chemical, is not the result of communicable disease. It is uniquely part of one allergic individual's body chemistry. The misery is comparable to that of anyone who is sick, but the cure and prognosis is vastly different. Basically, treatment goes like this: you stop the immune system from reacting by using antihistamines, you treat the symptoms with the appropriate symptom-relieving medication, and you try to limit the exposure to the allergen. Additionally, you recondition the body to stop identifying the allergen as a foreign body to be attacked using allergy desensitization (allergy shots). Prognosis is usually understood to be like this: If you are not in anaphylactic shock or if your respiratory system is not swelling shut, then your prognosis is not life-threatening and you can expect to be merely uncomfortable for a bit-so you can grin and bear it. Take two (or one) antihistamines and call -ugh-look forward to tomorrow.

But why are some people allergic? The answer relates to the glory of nature and genetics. The making of an antibody is a bit accidental. The making of a class of similar antibodies is fairly straight forward. The making of a specific antibody in a class of antibodies requires the chance occurrence of the genes that code for

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