English Transcript
Allergist Kathleen May, MD: Well, we know there’s a strong genetic component to having allergies. So, if you have a parent who has nasal allergy, one parent, you’re about 50% likely to have allergies. And if both your parents have allergies, you’re about 80% likely to have some type of nasal allergy.
Now, the kind of way the allergy will present itself is different depending on what your family history is. So, if your parent has nasal allergies, you might get that. If your parent has a history of asthma, you may have actually you may actually get asthma. So what’s interesting is we know from studies of families that for example peanut allergy, if one person has a peanut allergy, their sibling is about 8% likely to have a peanut allergy as well. So it’s not as high as you would think.
And then when you look at twin studies, if you have a peanut allergy, your twin, even if it’s an identical twin, is about 66% likely to have an allergy, not 100%. So the reason for that is that there are some subtle genetic changes that happen with the environment, which is why when we have allergies, the exact thing we’re allergic to is not the same as what our parents or our siblings might be allergic to. It has to do with what we’re exposed to and how that environment changes our genes, actually.
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