The Natural Course of Atopy and the Possibility of Immunity

Here too, the disease could be influenced by social changes in the West, such as increased numbers of sexual partners. Atopic diseases are more common in subjects with HIV. Whether this is a matter of one disease increasing susceptibility to the other or a matter of common factors favoring transmission is worth questioning.

In epidemiologic studies in the late 1950s and early 1960s, we found a small, but significantly increased, risk for nonallergic canadian viagra online pharmacy, family history-negative adults who married partners with hay fever or asthma (Table 1). To our knowledge, this situation never has been explored further. Because the proposition met with so much skepticism, further work was dropped. However, we had an opportunity to perform a pilot study by joining psychiatrist colleagues in adding our detailed questionnaire when they interviewed numbers of 367 adoptive families. Adoptive parents with asthma or allergic rhinitis, especially an adoptive mother with asthma, posed a high risk for hay fever or asthma in the adoptee (mother asthma/adoptee asthma, 31%; rhinitis, 24%), which was comparable to that posed by asthma in a natural mother. Other prospective studies should be performed.

Two studies of pulmonary therapists compared with physiotherapists and radiology technicians found that 7.1% of the pulmonary therapists with a negative personal and family history had developed asthma since beginning their profession, compared with 2.4% of those in a control group. The low, but very significantly increased, risk for pulmonary therapists and marital partners seemed to indicate substantial immunity in the adult population. Well-planned prospective studies are needed.

To sum up, there is enough circumstantial evidence to warrant performing studies that would be carried out if the idea of an infectious cause were not considered to be impossible.

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