We're Crazy Close To A Cure For Allergies

Allergies turn your own body against you over something stupid like strawberries. We've got to be able to stop that. Anthony here for Dnews and allergies suck. There is no more annoying reminder of how fragile the human body really is than getting laid up in bed because a pollen or peanut dust. And while there's everything from over-the-counter pills to epi pens to help mitigate the symptoms, we've never been able to knock out allergies entirely. But thanks to some researchers over at Johns Hopkins, we just got crazy close to eliminating these things once and for all. So allergies basically occur when your immune system thinks that something normal is a threat. It makes these antibodies called Immunoglobulin E to protect you from things that cause illness. An allergic person's body makes way too much in it. These antibodies that bind to mast cells and together they absorb chemicals from your blood that are helpful in fighting invasion. When something like pollen gets into an allergic person's bloodstream, it sticks to the antibodies and the mast cells release all those chemicals, like histamine. That's the one that gives you all the itchy, runny nose, can't breathe, swelling up sorta reactions, which is why allergy medicines are antihistamines. Allergies can also change over time. So maybe you weren't lactose intolerant when you were younger but now, whoops, no more ice cream for you. Or maybe you could never have ice cream and now you're totally good, but why? As always, it's genes. If one of your parents is allergic to something, your chance of having some kind of allergy is about 50 percent. Two allergic parents, seventy to eighty percent. But other factors come into play: pollution in the environment, your diet, even your emotional health, which makes it sound like someone that epigenetic stuff we've been talking about lately right? Like maybe every allergy is connected to some specific gene sequence and environmental trigger. Well the team at Johns Hopkins just found out that no! One single genetic pathway is responsible for a huge number of common food and environmental allergies. One stupid protein called TGF-beta, is causing all of our problems. Now TGF-beta controls how cells in your vital organs grow and how they communicate with each other. Faulty signaling from it has been known to cause connective tissue disorders. But here's what's awesome. See right now, a lot of people are using expensive prescription medicine or injections to treat allergies, but high TFG-beta signaling can be treated with something called Losartan, which is a very old simple drug that's been used for years to control high blood pressure. Now more study has to be done, of course, but how awesome is that? If your body wants to make something simple like cat hair deadly, well then you can use something simple to get it back in line. And in the future just like anything genetic, we might be able to nip this in the bud and use some sort of gene therapy or future medication to change the way TGF-beta works in our bodies entirely and say goodbye to allergies forever! That's pretty cool. You guys have any allergies? Let's share stories of suffering down below and remember to subscribe for more Dnews.