Recent surveys have estimated that the prevalence of hay fever among modem populations is between 2 and 15 per cent.1 Yet there are few references to the condition in any literature before the nineteenth century. Despite this fact, by 1900 hay fever was described as a common and fashionable disease. In this paper I outline the first descriptions of hay fever and how ideas about it developed thr...

BACKGROUND We wondered whether short-term coseasonal sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) can reduce the development of asthma in children with hay fever in an open randomized study. OBJECTIVE We sought to determine whether SLIT is as effective as subcutaneous immunotherapy in reducing hay fever symptoms and the development of asthma in children with hay fever. METHODS One hundred thirteen child...

Even though, the term 'allergy' first appeared in the medical literature in 1906, allergic diseases such as asthma, urticaria and eczema have been known for centuries, and their history dates back to antiquity.1 In the Middle Ages, 'rose fever' was a well-known entity with symptoms similar to hay fever.2The first description of the clinical symptoms of hay fever (seasonal allergic rhinitis) is ...

Background. Declining family size is one factor that has been proposed to contribute to increasing asthma and hay fever prevalence, but its relative importance has not been quantified. Objective. Our purpose was to determine the change in asthma and hay fever prevalence that would be expected from the reduction in family size that has occurred in England/Wales and New Zealand over recent decade...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether increased numbers of siblings and infection in early life protect against allergic sensitisation. DESIGN Historical cohort study. SETTING Sheffield, UK. SUBJECTS 11,765 children aged 11-16 years for whom a history of neonatal infectious illness had been recorded systematically at 1 month of age. METHODS A history of hay fever and family structure was obtai...

Little is known about the number of people who perceive themselves to be sufferers of hay fever. This study investigated how many people between the ages of 15 and 59 years perceived themselves to be hay fever sufferers and how they treated themselves. The study was carried out in a general practice in Arnold, Nottingham, using a postal questionnaire, to which the response rate was 77% from a s...

BACKGROUND Atopic diseases, for example, eczema, asthma, and hay fever, are among the most common chronic diseases of childhood. Knowledge on health service use among children with atopic disease is limited. This study aimed to investigate the total use and costs of health services for children with and without eczema, asthma, and hay fever in a Danish general population. METHODS We conducted...

Rhinitis, allergic (AR) and non-allergic (NAR), and chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) are different expressions of upper airway inflammation. Chronic upper airway symptoms are common in childhood and adolescence. There is a need for more epidemiologic data of these different entities of upper airway symptoms in the aspects of prevalence, natural course, co-morbidity and risk factors. The aim of this...