Published on: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 |
Kota Kinabalu: Allergy is the epidemic of the 21st century - that's how Sarawak General Hospital's ENT, Head & Neck Surgeon cum Occupational Physician, Dr Viknes Tharumalingam, described allergy at the recent Allergy Symposium for Family Physicians in Sabah.
In his presentation on the seriousness of the epidemic, he said researchers predict that by 2015, half of us will have an allergy.
"More than a third of people with allergies cannot go to restaurants or have to avoid triggers such as perfumes, cleaning fluid and animals.
Globally, the important allergens are house dust mites, grass, tree and weed pollens, pets (cat and dog), cockroaches and moulds," he told the symposium.
Dr Viknes said apart from heredity, the incriminated factors for allergy diseases are indoor pollution (house dust mites, cockroaches, pets and tobacco smoke), outdoor pollution (by ozone, particulate matter (diesel), nitrogen dioxide, etc), lifestyle change, dietary habits and different hygienic conditions.
According to him, asthma alone is responsible for an estimated 9 billion working days lost each year in the European Union.
"Thirty years ago, a third of asthma cases were said to be caused by allergy. Now it is 80 per cent."
He added that asthma is the main reason children miss school and is the leading cause of the hospitalisation of children in the world.
Quoting a study by the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, Dr Viknes said it found that the United Kingdom has more teenage asthma cases than any other country in Europe with 32.2 per cent of 13 to 14-year-olds affected. Ireland came next with 29.1 per cent, followed by Malta and Finland, each with 16 per cent.
"Scientists think our genes may be partly responsible."
The symposium heard that currently, in Australia and New Zealand, "close to 40 per cent of children are allergic. It has become almost more normal to be allergic than not." In the UK, 30 per cent of children have some sort of allergy.
Disclosing the latest estimates, Dr Viknes said these suggest that one-third of the total UK population (approximately 18 million people) will develop allergy at some time in their lives. "Asthma, rhinitis (nose allergy) and eczema have increased in incidence two to three fold in the last 20 years."
In the UK, allergic disease accounts for 6 per cent of general practice consultations, 0.6 per cent of hospital admissions and 10 per cent of the GP prescribing budget.
"The cost in primary care (excluding hospital service) to the National Health Service is US$900 million per annum."
On the risk of developing allergy based on family history, Dr Viknes said there is only 5-15 per cent risk if the parents have no allergies and 20-40 per cent risk if only one parent has allergies.
"If both parents have allergies, then the child's risk of allergy is 40-60 per cent."
He also discussed five possible solutions to the epidemic of the 21st century.
These are education, allergen and irritant avoidance, medicinal in nature (examples, use of intra-nasal steroid, intra-nasal or oral decongestant, etc), immunotherapy and gene modulation.
In his conclusion, Dr Viknes called on public health authorities to implement a rational and coherent policy for dealing with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of allergies.
"Allergic disease affects a large portion of the population. Besides high medical costs, there is high morbidity affecting the quality of life with a risk for chronic disease," he pointed out.
