• Question: We have been studying allergies, could you please answer this? Do you think that if you live with an animal you have an allergy to could help you become immune or will it increase the severity of the diesease?

    Asked by kscience to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Panos Soultanas

      Panos Soultanas answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi,

      If you are already allergic to that animal it may be a bad idea. However, recently scientists claimed that if you are exposed to an allergen at very small and cotrolled amounts then gradually your immune system learns to accept it and your allergy eventually gets cured. it is a slow process and needs to be done by qualified doctors though.

    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Allergies can be treated by regular limited exposure to whatever causes the allergy. It doesn’t always work, but it has been demonstrated many times. I was allergic to cats before my wife insisted we had one, now I’m not bothered by any reaction to it at all.

    • Photo: Mark Travis

      Mark Travis answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      This is a very good question. You can potentially build up a resistance to the allergen (i.e. the animal hair and dander), but it depends on how much exposure you get. Things may get worse before they get better! For some allergies (e.g. hayfever), a treatment that is used is to give small doses of the thing they are allergic to to try and stop the allergy. But whether this would work for all allergies I am not entirely sure….

    • Photo: Sarah Burl

      Sarah Burl answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Ifyou live with an animal you have an allergy to it could become worse but you probably won’t get better as your body already as the antibodies in it that kick off the over reaction that you get. If you moved away from the animal for a long period of time there is the chance that you may be loss the allergy to the animal but this doesn’t always work! It is also possible that you could desensitise yourself to the allergen by being exposed to very small amounts of it over a period of time, but you would have to do this while away from the animal.

    • Photo: Michael Loughlin

      Michael Loughlin answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      well it depends what you are allergic to if you are highly allergic to animal fur then its bad news having one in the house. But if at an early age you are not hypoersensitive to fur then being in contact with an animal early on might prevent it occuring., Part of it is our genes some of are natually nore sensitive, but its also the envirnment as well
      sorry its not a very specific yes no answer..but we don’t know the answer yet

      good question tho

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