Science/Medicine : Doctors Stress Importance of Immunology

The study of how bodies develop immunities has become important to every medical speciality and additional courses in the field are needed in medical schools, physicians urged in a recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

“The future holds great promise for the allergy and clinical immunology,” wrote Dr. John E. Salvaggio of Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans and Dr. K. Frank Austen of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“New developments . . . confirm the relevance of immunology to every speciality and subspeciality of medicine and the continued application of new diagnostic and therapeutic developments to diseases involving various organ systems,” they wrote in the issue, which was devoted entirely to allergic illnesses.

Among the 40 million Americans with allergies, up to 30 million suffer from asthma or hay fever or both, researchers said. Hay fever, often accompanied by sneezing, may be seasonal or perennial, and the most apparent seasonal culprits are pollens from plants such as ragweed, and molds and insect debris.

Contrary to popular belief, the heavy, sticky pollens from brightly colored flowers seldom cause hay fever, wrote Dr. Michael Kaliner of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethseda, Md.

Asthma, he noted, is the most frequent cause of school absenteeism among young sufferers, who may be sensitive to pollens, dust in the workplace or insects.

In their article, the doctors also said that food allergies remain difficult to diagnose and incidence is largely unknown. Avoiding the offending foods is the best method of preventing allergic reactions.