Immunology and Allergology >>>> Pseudo-allergic reaction - what is it?

Pseudo-allergic reaction - what is it?

An allergic reaction often becomes a sentence that introduces exceptions to a well-established life: not to eat your favorite foods, not to communicate with pets, not to be treated with conventional drugs, not to use chemical products in everyday life, not to walk in the spring among flowering plants and many other things that can’t be done and consumed. Such a life turns into a journey "through a minefield", when a person probes every step, whether his action will cause allergies, whether he will have to deny himself another pleasant thing.

Despite the fact that allergy has firmly settled in modern life, it is poorly treated, and sometimes not treated at all, the next attack of allergy may not be entirely allergic, and the so-called pseudo-allergy is a false allergy.

A real allergic reaction (true) is a complex process of the immune system, but directed not at a real pathogen, but at quite ordinary substances, accompanied by typical symptoms: visible (itching, tissue redness, edema, vasospasm, muscle tissue spasm, dizziness, disorders bowel movements, heart rhythm disturbances and other signs) and invisible (activation of immune cells - lymphocytes, which are antibodies for a pathogen (antigen), the release of chemicals into the blood that activate a cascade of other chemical reactions, which in turn trigger inflammatory mediators, which cause a visible reaction).

In order to track and confirm the presence of a real allergic reaction, an immunological study of the blood composition is carried out at the time of allergy development. The presence of certain factors (markers) - immunoglobulins of the IgE type in the blood and gives an idea that a true allergy to the test substance develops in the body.

But a pseudo-allergic reaction does not proceed according to a given program of a typical immune response to an antigen. In the case of pseudo-allergy, the body skips the stage of the response of the immune system, in which antibodies to the antigen (allergen) should be produced, and the symptoms are reduced to the activation of the inflammatory mediator (histamine) and visible inflammatory reactions.

The statistics of the reasons for the development of pseudo-allergy identifies a number of factors leading to a pseudo-allergic reaction:

Food products containing dyes, preservatives, fermentation products (fermentation, decay);
Overdose of medications;
Introduction of X-ray contrast agents in medical research;
Intestinal absorption disorders (lack of absorption of substances during digestion);
Waste products of helminths.

How is pseudo-allergy treated? It is important to notice under what circumstances the symptoms of pseudo-allergy occur in order to exclude from the use, for example, certain medicines, food. In the treatment of false allergies, diet is of great importance, which allows you to exclude synthetic chemicals and preservatives from the digestion process. An important role in the treatment of a pseudo-allergic reaction is played by an examination of the gastrointestinal tract and the identification of disorders in the digestive process.

It must be remembered that a real allergy can only be distinguished from a pseudo-allergy by a doctor - an allergist or a doctor - immunologist, based on biochemical studies.