Allergy: Overview

Millions of people around the world are affected by allergies. The tendency to develop allergies is inherited. If you have allergic tendencies and are exposed to certain things in your environment (allergens), you may become allergic to some of those things. Examples of common allergens include:

• Animal allergy
• Cockroach allergy
• Dust mite allergy
• Insect sting allergy
• Food allergy
• Latex allergy
• Medication allergy
• Mold allergy
• Pollen allergy

How Allergy Was Discovered

In 1902, two French scientists injected dogs with a small amount of extract from the sea anemone (a flower-like marine animal). Nothing happened. A week later, they repeated the procedure in exactly the same way - and watched, amazed, as the dogs developed severe reactions.

The dogs had somehow become sensitive to the formerly harmless substance and the researchers had discovered allergy. In allergic individuals, the immune system reacts to foreign substances that are otherwise harmless as if they were dangerous. These substances are called allergens. Allergy symptoms are the result of the immune system reacting to an allergen. Persons who have developed an allergy are described as having become "sensitized".

In the decades since those landmark sea anemone experiments, scientists have come to know a great deal about the mechanisms of allergy.