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by Valerie Coskrey

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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 the antibody to turn on a particular combination of DNA sequences. As luck would have it, over the eons, the pathogens that man has developed immunity to are those that correspond to the sequences with the highest probabilities of being made based on chance sequences possibilities passed on through inheritance. The individual humans that have survived to reproduce over the generations are those that tend to turn on the sequences of DNA that code for the needed antibodies. In this chancy shuffling of one's immune system's DNA sequences to be turned on, some antibodies are produced that respond to the chemicals that become one's allergens. Once made and united with an allergen, an antibody is reproduced in great numbers over long periods of time (a lifetime?). Why? Because the cell that produced the DNA sequence for the antibody is signaled to preserve the sequence for the future production of that antibody now recognized as needed to fit an antigen in the fight for survival of the body against foreign invaders. Future exposure to an allergen only causes the body to make more antibodies against it, resulting in the immune-response symptoms known as an allergy attack. Why the different symptoms? The allergy-antibody response can take place in mast cells found in the membranes of the respiratory tract or the digestive system, the cells of the skin, the white cells in the lymph nodes, or in the macrophages and other white cells in the blood. Depending on which body system and cells first develop the antibodies, which cluster of cells inherit the actual DNA sequencing to be turned on by the exposure to the allergen, that tissue and area of the body is what responds. The actual symptom is most likely due to the inflammatory response of that particular tissue located in that spot of the body. Hence the range of symptoms, the individual nature of the allergy, and the variety of allergens.

The beauty of nature in making the allergy response is this. The chance sequencing of the DNA for making antibodies increases the odds of some human sometime making an antibody against just about any pathogen. It is the individual that makes the antibody to a newly emergent virus that will provide antibodies for the rest of us that do not do so, thereby saving man from a new and deadly virus. It is the hope that a few individuals will survive a pandemic to repopulate a ravaged Earth. It is a key to survival of the fittest and hence of mankind.

Learn more about this author, Valerie Coskrey.

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