Mumbai: If you’ve been blaming your allergic cough, runny nose and itchy skin on flowering trees or neighborhood pets, it’s time to do a rethink. Insects — particularly mosquitoes, cockroaches and dust mites — are to blame for nearly 50% of the allergies in India. And food — especially peanuts, chocolates and legumes — is the other big culprit.
This is what a Mumbai allergy specialist found after he set out to map the desi allergy index. “Since we are a tropical country, our allergies and asthma are very different from the West because our flora, fauna and foodstuffs are different. It’s time tropical allergies and asthma are recognized as distinct in themselves,” says Dr Wiqar Shaikh, who studied 3,389 patients from across the country and visited various Mumbai hospitals from 2003 to 2007.
Shaikh’s study shows allergies can be gender-sensitive. Teenage boys are less likely to be sniffling through college as they outgrow their allergies by adolescence while girls may suffer in these years.
In the US or Europe, pollen from flowering plants is a common trigger for allergies, accounting for 20% of all cases. Not so in India where a mere 8.61% of patients studied showed wheezing or blocked noses because of pollen. Asthma and rhinitis predictably formed the major chunk of all allergies.
Interestingly, food allergies are more common here than among Westerners. Take, for instance, the allergy to rice which was only reported from Japan till now but which has showed up among Indians. Or take chocolates, the second-most common food allergen in the study. While the western palate is most sensitive to milk, egg, meat and wheat, Indians are likely to react to peanuts, chocolates, and even legumes (dal).
TOP 10 FOODS THAT CAUSE ALLERGIES
- Peanuts
- Chocolate
- Fish
- Cashewnut
- Legumes (Dal)
- Soya Bean
- Lemon
- Milk
- Wheat
- Chicken
Prevention is the best cure for most allergies
- Mumbai: Watch your plate before you complain of allergies. Most of the allergies flows from the kind of food one eats, and the most shocking part is allergies are on the rise.
- “Allergies have increased from 25.3% in 1997 to 28.96% in 2007,’’ notes Dr Wiqar Shaikh, who studied 3,389 patients from across the country before coming out with his findings.
- Dr Shaikh is attached to the Prince Aly Khan and Saifee Hospitals, works as an honorary physician at the staterun JJ Hospital and has several research publications to his credit.
- He conducted this study along with his daughter Dr Shifa Shaikh who was then an intern at Nair Hospital to get a measure of the incidence of allergies in India, as most data used by doctors here is nearly a decade old. Their findings were published in the Journal of the Indian Medical Association in April.
- Dr Pramod Niphadkar, who heads a support group — the Asthma and Bronchitis Association of India — agrees with the overall findings.
- Do allergies come with warning signs? Dr Niphadkar says food allergies are easier to spot since most of us can link an outbreak of rash or vomiting with the food consumed if it happens repeatedly. “The trickiest are drug allergies as there are no specific tests to confirm or rule them out,” he says.
The study showed anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin and ibuprofen, penicillin and sulphonamides were to blame for most drug reactions. For most common triggers, allergy tests are recommended for people who don’t find help from standard medication. - It’s best to be cautious, advises Dr Shaikh, as avoidance measures are one of the best ways to deal with allergies.
- For instance, the analysis showed that artificial jewelery containing nickel sulphate was the commonest cause of skin rash. A person who knows this simply avoids using such jewelery. An extreme allergic reaction could also prove fatal.
Courtesy: The Times of India
Madhavi Rajadhyaksha | TNN
