"There is no medical provision that could deal with such a high number of sick people unless society starts to come to grips with the problem of allergies," says Kristóf Nékám, the senior doctor and department head at the Ignorantine Hospital in Buda. The rise in the number of allergies is real and not merely the result of juggling with the changing conditions of diagnosis. If somebody is already allergic to something, they can expect to become allergic to a lot more things as years go by. This is because in the human body the risk of the badly programmed immune response missing its target in all similar situations is constantly growing.

"We have not had time to adjust to the rapid pace of change in our world," is the conclusion that Kristóf Nékám draws from the studies made on the subject over the last 150 years. When after the great epidemics more attention began to be paid to hygiene it freed up greater capacity in the immune system. The allergies started to run rampant because of new stimuli generated by industrialization, such as pollutants in the air, water and soil, and the additives that can be found in food.

Most types of allergies have a common characteristic in that they are set off by allergens, which are fundamentally protein-like, thus the immune response always targets a particular protein, or rather a protein segment of a few amino acids. This is why immune therapies change the immune system's reaction linked to the given protein: they replace oversensitivity to the allergens with the tolerance they build up. This method can be a life-saver in the case of insect bites and can reduce and eradicate symptoms in the case of sensitivity to the pollen families.

However, only medicines can offer symptomatic relief to such multiple sensitivities. The palette of solutions ranges from medicinal treatment to foot massage. "One of the favourite areas of quack medicine is allergies," says Nékám, adding that you can never know who will be cured from what - if someone feels that a daily ten-kilometer run would help their condition, they should run. The responsibility of the healthcare worker is to provide the right information, but it is up to the patient to decide.

Most people are unaffected by the factors that cause allergies; however, those who have a wrongly programmed, oversensitive immune system, do become ill. Apart from tepid, distilled water, almost anything can be an allergen. Pollens - the most common culprits -account for at least half of all allergies and cannot be avoided. From what we now know people who are predisposed to having an allergy cannot avoid developing one, although there are many ways to reduce the frequency of contact and thus the concentration of the allergen.

Babies born in the peak of the pollen season have a somewhat higher chance of developing an allergy than those who come into the world in the winter months. According to some observations even a fetus is capable of displaying an immune reaction to some alien proteins, which enter its system in addition to the mother's defensive proteins.

In recent years it has also been discovered that teenage pregnancies and some aspects of women's lifestyles predating pregnancy - for example taking certain forms of contraception - can also increase the future child's tendency to develop an allergy. Today's lifestyle, and especially smoking, is a hotbed for the development of allergies. There is only one thing to counter this in children for sure: at least six months of breast feeding.

It can only be guessed at how many people suffer from an allergy in Hungary, as a map of allergy occurrence in the population has not been made. According to estimates 17-25 percent suffer from an allergic flu. Yet, Kristóf Nékám is an optimist: so far mankind has solved every essential question that has had a bearing on the survival of the species, and sooner or later a cure for allergies will be found. It is quite conceivable that at the rapid rate that biological therapies are developing, there will be a breakthrough in this area, although there is a great deal of uncertainty in relation to the side effects these can produce.

CAMPAIGN AGAINST RAGWEED

It is during these weeks that ragweed pollinates and brings misery to many people. In one year a single plant can produce 60 thousand seeds, which, in soil, can retain their ability to germinate for as long as 30 years. Land owners are - would have been - required to get rid of all the ragweed on their property by 30 June. Ragweed pollution of property is being checked by notaries and land registries. Even fields can come under the scope of the Central Agricultural Office's decree that forces owners to get rid of ragweed. Negligent farmers can expect fines ranging from 15 thousand to 5 million forints, and they could be even be stripped of their entitlements to certain forms of agricultural support. Cutting down ragweed must not be carried out by children even in small weekend allotments, since the air highly polluted by pollen could trigger a latent allergy.

EXERCISE TO BENEFIT FROM

Allergy is the exaggerated, or hysterical, response from our body given to one or more substances that it should tolerate under normal circumstances, explains Adrienne Nagy, an allergologist at Heim Pál Children's Hospital. On average a child has a ten percent chance of developing an allergy if he/she has no relatives who suffer from an allergy, while this jumps to 50 percent if one of the parents is affected and to more than 70 percent if both of them are. Although the allergy is a disease of the entire system, it often affects only one or two organs. In childhood, however, an allergy can move from one organ to another. Typically, allergies start with skin symptoms in early childhood with skin symptoms related to food allergies, which then subside and the disease moves on to attack the respiratory system, producing asthmatic symptoms; later, during puberty, these may lessen into hay fever. For this reason children are often only taken to a specialist with problems related to one particular organ.

In certain foods, a short segment of the protein is the same as the protein bit found in a pollen. That is why some people suffering from allergy produce allergic symptoms while eating melon, most commonly in the form of redness and itchiness of skin around the mouth. This is called a cross allergy, which also led to the hypothesis that food containing numerous additives might be responsible for the body oversensitivity by triggering allergic symptoms which is characteristic of an allergy brought on by a pollen with the same protein structure. The prevention of allergy puts paediatricians to the test too. On the one hand, a child's immune system must learn to tolerate the various substances found in the environment, in which learning during infancy plays an important role. Carefully planned breastfeeding lasting for years and introducing the basic foods after 1 year of age have not reduced the number of allergic diseases. Moreover, the number of allergies is extremely high among only children raised under over-hygienic conditions. In contrast, the immune system of children with brothers and sisters is trained by the different banal infections they bring home, preventing the immune system from missing its target.