This Tuesday, March 21, spring officially begins, a few months that are especially delicate for people with pollen allergies given that the pollination of many plants converges in this season. Besides, drought, pollution and rising temperatures average throughout the Spanish geography pollen levels increase.
These, among other causes, cause the number of patients to grow each year, which in Spain have gone from representing 10-15% of the population at the beginning of the 1990s to representing 25% today. The truth is that every year there are more cases and they occur earlier. It is a phenomenon that is being observed globally. Today, allergic diseases, in general, are the sixth most prevalent disease in the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which has just warned that they represent one of the most important epidemics of the 21st century. Specifically, it is estimated that in our country there are currently between eight and ten million people with allergies to pollen, that is, one in five. The good news is that there are more and more patients who go to the specialist before, knowing the effectiveness of the vaccines.
multiple causes
As explained to YOUR HEALTH Juan Jose Zapata, president of the Clinical Aerobiology Committee of the Spanish Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (Seaic), this increase may be due to multiple causes. In addition to environmental and weather factors, he points out that “because there is greater control of infectious diseases, the immune system Instead of specializing in fighting bacterial or viral pathogens, it specializes in fighting allergens, for example.”
He also explains that some studies suggest that a precursor to this rise in cases could be the fact that every day more children are born by caesarean section “because when a baby is born vaginally, all the flora from the vagina passes into the digestive system, which allows that begins very quickly to develop all the microbiota from your intestine. However, if there is no contact with the vaginal canal, the child may have deficiencies in his microbiota and greater problems adapting to his environment, “she clarifies.
Las vaccines they are the only treatment capable of changing the course of the disease. Juan José Zapata emphasizes that the fundamental thing in the case of allergies is to make a good diagnosis and to know which is the specific allergen that is causing pollinosis in order to know which vaccine to use. “Vaccines are an essential tool,” he insists. If a patient has an allergy to the olive tree, they are injected with the olive tree, so that their immune system develops a tolerance to the pollen of this tree, which in other people happens naturally. For the vaccination to be effective and there is no relapse, it may take between three and five years. He also emphasizes that the guarantees are greater the sooner treatment is started.
Vaccines are not new. They are over a century old. The first time that a vaccine treatment was prescribed was in 1911, to a patient with allergy to dust mites. Since then they have experienced great advances in step with the evolution of branches of science such as biochemistry or genetics. “Right now, vaccines are being made that are very well designed, are more effective, and produce far fewer side effects.” This latter aspect has been achieved, among other things, by enhancing natural pollen with laboratory-developed chemical substrates. Above all, much progress has been made in the time that treatment lasts. If before you had to be vaccinated every week, now there are those that are only given once a month, although there are others that only require three doses each year.
Of course, they should not be prescribed for people with autoimmune diseases or cancer. Neither in patients with hypertension or heart disease very severe, to which an injection of adrenaline cannot be applied in case a reaction occurs.
polysensitized
This specialist warns that while before the monosensitive patientsthose who are allergic to a single species of plant, are now being seen in consultation polysensitized cases. “Now,” he clarifies, “it is one thing to be sensitive to different pollens and another to be allergic, which is when symptoms appear. This is determined through analysis and skin tests and is decisive for making the vaccine.
Before the typical spring pollination breaks out, it is advisable to have a check of the mucous membranes and a respiratory function test as well as having cured the viral processes that have been suffered in the winter months, because if the mucosa remains irritated, at face pollen, they will be more reactive and they will have more symptoms.
To deal with this station, it is also recommended to know the pollination predictions by plant species and area. The first pollens to appear, at the beginning of the year, are those of the mugwort. Now the cypress is in the middle of the process – maximum levels are already being registered in some cities. In April the grasses will begin to pollinate and in May and June the olive tree is added. Also the saisola. “What causes this calendar is that in polyallergic patients the symptoms are chained and the disease becomes persistent,” reveals Juan José Zapata.
A big pollen explosion is coming
According to Jose Miguel VinasMeteored expert, right now the conditions are favorable for a great explosion of pollen to take place in the coming weeks, which will continue, at least, throughout the beginning of the spring season.
As he explains to A TU SALUD, the worst thing that can happen for a big pollen explosion to occur is the combination of high temperatures and no rain.
And so it is, the dry cycle that currently crosses the southwest of the peninsula and Catalonia and several degrees above what is usual in mid-March are the perfect cocktail for there to be significant pollination at the end of this month and the beginning of April.
The current weather scenario is different from the one that occurred last year during these dates when spring began with a lot of rain in the Mediterranean and the southern half of the peninsula.
