Why are pollen allergies generally less severe than peanut allergies?
In: Biology
My guess is that if a human was deathly allergic to pollen natural selection would have dealt with that gene thousands of years ago.
There is no short answer to this.
(https://qz.com/1770370/why-are-peanut-allergies-so-severe/) this is a good source but my comment includes the comparison.
There are many steps nuts have to go through for the allergens in them to trigger the immune system.
The production process which involves many steps can breakdown allergens in food but nuts are rarely bothered by this process so the allergens remain in tact.
Nuts contain multiple allergens, most types contain between 3-10 but peanuts contain 17. This means each allergens interacts with the body differently meaning there is more for your body to deal with.
Pollen contains less allergens than peanuts and there is the unknown immune systems way of dealing with exposure.
Gradual desensitisation means continued exposure causes the body to get used to allergens and therefore stops producing an immune response but sometimes continued exposure can cause an immune system to trigger for the first time or to make the existing one worse.
The studies around this are often conflicting and varied due to inability to control the huge number of variables that could cause this difference of exposure responses.
Pollen allergies are suffered by about 20% of the population so this could be caused by the continuous exposure triggering an immune response. As 20% is rather high. Most allergies such as food allergies only impact about 5% of people.
The reason why it would be less lethal is that there are less allergens to deal with in grass and pollen and also if the high rate is caused by the continued exposure, there is no major threat from the allergy so it doesn’t trigger a big immune response.
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