I have a ton of allergies, antihistamines don’t work for me at all, so I asked my doctor to prescribe me actual medicine, she said that the antihistamines is all there is, with immunotherapy showing very little success rates and only fitting better for specific allergens.
I am shocked – it’s the 21st century, why can’t we cure allergies? Or at least have a medicine that would completely remove the symptoms?
In: Biology
Pathogens like bacteria and viruses are actually doing things in your body, mostly reproducing. They have moving parts and their own chemistry that we can specifically target with drugs to kill or paralyze them.
Allergens are just stuff that your body’s immune system is freaking out about. Pollen, dander, latex, etc are causing damage just by being there. There’s nothing to try and kill, and we don’t have any technology for removing tiny things like that from our bodies. The only thing to attack would be your immune system, which is obviously a bad idea because it would leave you open to real pathogens.
Antihistamines reduce the level of response to the allergens, but that’s all we have figured out so far. We would need some technology to turn off one specific part of your immune system, the part that doesn’t like pollen or whatever, while leaving the rest intact.
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