I have heard this from someone’s personal experience, where they had reactions from eating tuna way back (around 20 years ago), but they don’t anymore. That being said, how does the body eventually adapt to allergic reactions? What mechanisms go on with our immune system that leads to that?
Immunotherapy can cause the body to adapt to these allergies, by exposing a person to an allergen to try to alter the immune system, the person no longer responds to the allergen in an adverse way. Training your body to accept an allergen,it is possible to develop tolerence and avoid adverse reaction.
Hi Andrea! I have read some studies about tolerance to allergies over time. These are some of them:
Adaptation to an allergic reaction occurs when the body's immune system recognizes that a certain food protein is not harmful. The immune system forms antibodies and other cells to target and eliminate the food protein, thereby reducing or eliminating the allergic reaction. In addition, some people may develop a type of “tolerant state” meaning they will not experience any adverse reactions or symptoms when consuming the food proteins again.
The exact mechanisms underlying the development of tolerance are still under investigation, though numerous studies suggest that both innate and adaptive immune tolerance may be involved. Innate immune tolerance refers to the body’s ability to recognize components of the food as safe and not initiate an inflammatory response. This requires recognition of the food components as harmless by immune mediators. Adaptive immunity refers to the development of specific antibodies and cells that recognize the food components as harmless and do not initiate an inflammatory response.
References:
1. Chauhan, A., Verma, V., Mohamad, M., & Aggarwal, A. (2017). Immune Tolerance: Understanding the Mechanism. Journal of Immunology Research, 2017, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/5161348
2. Shah, D., & Cole, D. (2016). Tolerance, Allergic Reactions, and Immune Evasion: Insights into the Cellular Mechanism of Tolerance Development. Advances in Immunology, 127, 87–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.ai.2016.05.002
Sometimes the body becomes immune to a certain allergen, however, more often than not, a response to a specific allergen gets worse, not better, with repeated exposures. This is why avoidance is so crucial.
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