• Boticaria García How to know if you have an allergy or a cold
  • Health How to relieve itchy eyes due to allergy

In the months of April and May of this year, the emergency services have detected a striking increase in allergic patients but also of those who are affected for the first time and go to the emergency room with symptoms they had never had, including asthma attacks to varying degrees.

This year 2023 is being "the worst year so far this century", because exaggerated pollination, a breeding ground for allergies, is a consequence of the lack of rain and the increase in temperatures, according to the president of the clinical aerobiology committee of the Spanish Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (SEAIC), Juan José Zapata.

The vice president of the Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine (SEMES), Pascual Piñera, corroborates this significant increase in allergies, in which the profile of the debutant is that of a middle-aged patient, between 25 and 50 years old, who presents respiratory distress and bronchial asthma since when the symptoms are limited to rhinorrhea and nasal congestion they go to Primary Care.

In Spain between 20 and 25% of the population is allergic. The head of clinical aerobiology of the SEAIC recalls that in 1991, when he began working as an allergist, the frequency among the Spanish population was 10-15% and that upward trend is maintained so it is expected to affect 50% of the population in about 15 or 20 years.

BRONCHIAL ASTHMA GROWS IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

According to Zapata, the "unstoppable" growth of the disease is influenced by many factors, not only genetic predisposition, but also pollution and the environment, the fact that children spend more time inside homes and have few siblings.

And the fact, he says, that there are fewer infectious diseases makes the immune system more sensitive to things that should be tolerated like pollen or mites.

The allergist comments that it is common to find patients who start as children an "allergic march" that begins when they have a few months of life and special sensitivity to some food (such as milk), to develop atopic dermatitis a posteriori and begin, shortly after, with bronchial processes and asthma attacks.

Zapata makes it clear that "in the genes is written the possibility of being allergic, some develop it quickly and others go back that allergic march and the disease appears at any time of life."

Comments this allergist who for the first time is seeing in consultation patients of 70 and 80 years who debut with allergic processes, "something that previously seemed impossible".

ALLERGISTS ASK NOT TO TRIVIALIZE THE DISEASE

The increase this year in consultations with acute cases has skyrocketed. This has happened, explains Zapata, due to the heat, the 24% decrease in water resources, the lack of rainfall and the advance of pollination.

"All the plants went into heat pollination and this produced a peak of cases in April and May with significant asthma. And these terrible peaks have caught by surprise many people who did not know how to identify the symptoms because it was the first time they had them and they landed in the emergency room, "he says.

And in this situation, Zapata considers that, above all, what should be done is not to trivialize the disease and have a diagnosis as soon as possible.

"With a good diagnosis and good follow-up, the disease can be controlled and ensure that an allergic person has quality of life, even in spring," he says.

And he warns that nobody knows what will happen in the coming months "since a second pollination, of the grass for example, would not be uncommon" with another peak of cases and a wave of new processes.

  • Medicine

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more