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Dear Ekc; There are some papers supporting the genetic contribution to allergy such as atopy but environmental factors trigering the allergic reaction got more attention and stronger supports.
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I have always had a suspicion that some allergies have a genetic component, because several people in my family are allergic to the same things. For example, my Uncle and I are both allergic to capsicum, which isn’t a very common allergy, unlike eggs or peanuts! However, I’ve never really looked at genetics of allergies, so to answer your question, I went and looked for some research studies that looked at genetics and allergy. I picked one that was easy to talk about, but there are lots more out there!
There was a study in 2000 that looked at how often peanut allergies showed up in twins. They used twins for two reasons:
1) Twins are usually raised together, which means differences are less likely to be caused by their environment, so if both are allergic, it might mean it is genetic, but if one is allergic and the other not, it is probably not genetic, and due to something else.
2) There are two types of twins, monozygotic (Identical. Both from the same fertilised egg) and dizygotic (Non-Identical. Each from a separate fertilised egg). Monozygotic twins have even more similar DNA than dizygotic twins. So, if one identical twin has an allergy, but the other does not, it is probably not genetic, but if both of them do, it might very well be genetic.
With identical twins, they found that if one twin had a peanut allergy, the other usually did as well (about 64%). When they looked at twins that weren’t identical, if one had a peanut allergy, the other was only about 6.8% likely to have a peanut allergy too. This study then suggests that peanut allergies are likely to be linked to genetics.
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interesting question and I had no idea, but looked up a few science papers. There is indeed indication that some allergies may be genetic. This usually means that you have a mutation of one or more genes that can increase you chance of getting an allergy.
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I had to do a bit of reading on this one. There does appear to be a genetic component to allergies. Vanessa has talked about a good study that I was also reading regarding peanut allergies in twins that concludes that there is a strong genetic factor in allergies.
Howver, just to throw a spanner in the works I found a few abstracts and articles that discussed the rising incidnce of food allergies in our population and the possible causes of this. The current hypothesis for this is that it is a combination of genetic, and environmental factors
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I’m late to this one, but to pick up a thread that Kym mentioned: one of the potential explanations for the rising incidence of allergies is something called the ‘hygiene hypothesis’. This idea is that with the rise of modern health care and increasing levels of cleanliness and hygiene, the immune systems of young people aren’t being given enough to do when they’re developing (not exposed to enough infectious diseases or parasites), that they later start reacting inappropriately to harmless foreign bodies (antigens).
This could help to explain the rise in certain allergies and autoimmune diseases, though my quick reading of this area suggests that there’s only mixed evidence for it at best. (If I come across an immunologist, I’ll ask!).
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