Comment by rwmj
4 years ago
But why would it have apparently increased so much in the relatively recent past if the cause was genetics?
4 years ago
But why would it have apparently increased so much in the relatively recent past if the cause was genetics?
Changing rates of testing combined with false positives are presumably part of it. Apparently 10% of people think they are allergic to Penicillin but only 1% test positive and under 0.1% have a significant reaction.
That said, environment is a factor. People in the developing world test positive for fewer though by no means zero allergies compared to their relatives in the developed world.
There's also changes to breeds and varieties in common use. For example, modern wheat has like 20x the histamine response vs older varieties. These kinds of things will also affect different people differently.
_Has_ sesame allergy increased? Like, it’s _rare_; it’s just extremely nasty (it kills people).
It could be sampling bias or increased availability, but it does seem as if allergies in general are increasing: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/02/747545877/se...
I mean, that’s comparing one figure, which came from who-knows-where, to one new study; it’s not hugely convincing. Especially as at least the new figure is via self-reporting.
One thing I think people forget with this stuff, 50 years ago many people just weren’t exposed. I live in Ireland; when my grandparents were kids everyone in the country could’ve been allergic to sesame and no-one would have noticed; it just wasn’t part of the food culture.
Now, it is. In general, particularly in rural areas, most peoples’ diets were extremely restrictive until pretty recently; in industrialised countries people are exposed to a lot more variety than a couple of generations back.
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