Allergies such as hay fever are reaching epidemic proportions in Europe and a failure to treat them properly is creating a mounting bill for society and the healthcare system, experts said on Friday.
Around one third of the European population has some kind of allergy, while one in two children in Britain will have allergies by 2015, costing millions of euros in medical bills, lost work days and even impaired concentration in school pupils.
Experts say various factors such as air pollution, animal fur and dust mites could act as triggers for allergies but that the levels of allergic reaction vary from country to country.
Allergies were most prevalent in Britain and Ireland, as well as other English speaking countries like Canada, Australia and the United States.
"We have valid data that one third of European Union people have allergies but only 10 percent of these millions of people are treated well," Zuberbier said, adding that around 40 percent of children with untreated hay fever will develop asthma.
The GALEN network has established standard practice across Europe in diagnosing allergies and it has now begun to draw up guidelines on how best to treat the conditions.
Steve - one extremely important guideline that needs to be included is addressing the cross-reaction between foods and environmental allergens. Bonnie and I could not emphasize this more. The food we eat dramatically increases the severity of allergens we are exposed to environmentally. In addition, the less variety we have in our diet, the worse our allergies will get. It is not a coincidence that while corn, wheat, dairy and soy products appear more in our food supply, the number of allergy sufferers increase. Until this is taken seriously, allergies will continue to get worse.
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