When people are diagnosed with allergy, the commonest concern is whether it can be cured or not. Allergy, other than food allergy, does not lead to death or hospitalization but a severe uncontrolled form affects the quality of life (QOL) to such an extent that the affected person considers their life worse than death.

• Economic considerations:
  Extensive research worth billions is taken by developed countries in hopes to avail a better Quality Of Life to the patients. Countries like USA spend 6.5 billion dollars on the management of allergic rhinitis alone in direct expenditure. This is equivalent to government of India’s annual health budget. Another 5 billion dollars, each year in USA, are indirectly lost due to allergic rhinitis in form of man days and work absenteeism.
• Social considerations:
  Symptoms like headaches, sneezing, blocked nose, snoring, and halitosis not only brings about individual suffering but also affects interpersonal relationships, social and private life. It affects marital relationship, socialization and work related interactions. Due to these constant setbacks in social and private lives, the mental health of the patient population is affected, thereby, further deranging the Quality Of Life.
• How long is the therapy?
  There are innumerable drugs, devices and therapy to deal with allergy of any type. However, they all come with a price tag. Urticaria or hives of the long-term type is a mental, physical and economic burden. In more than 50% of the cases there is no cause and the patient goes through cycles of medication and on stopping medication, itching sets in again. It is because of this chronicity, these patients resort to alternative medicine with attainment of mixed results. This is because allergies are like a volcano. Unlike a volcano they have only two phases, the dormant and the active. There is no extinct phase. Thus while they are on alternative medicine the volcano goes into a dormant phase alas but temporarily. Hence it is necessary that a proper evidence based regimen is followed throughout life with an understanding that the disease needs more to be controlled rather than being eliminated.
• Conclusions:
  Anaphylaxis is nothing but an adverse reaction to allergic food, insect bite or to drugs. This needs to be diagnosed early and given prompt treatment. For details on anaphylaxis refer to my blog (http://allermy.com/site/blog/ ) Allergy, we find, is not only a chronic disorder affecting the quality of life of an individual but also the cause of Sudden Death. The irony is that in our country and much of the developing world there is a lack of awareness and knowledge amongst the people, more importantly, amongst the health care personnel. We are well aware of lifelong conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, but it’s important to remember that allergies lead to suffering of longer duration and rarely in certain cases a risk of sudden death by anaphylaxis. A Ray of Hope Unlike other permanent conditions, allergy has a hope for treatment. A new modality of therapy called immunotherapy can, in more than 50% of patients, cure allergy. However this is limited only for aeroallergens causing Asthma and Allergic Rhinitis and more importantly for the allergens causing death by anaphylaxis.

1.Muntajibuddin Arif Ahmed1 COMPARATIVE DATA REVIEW ON PREVALENCE, ECONOMIC BURDEN AND EPIDEMIOLOGY OF ALLERGIC RHINITIS BETWEEN THE USA AND INDIAJ. Evolution Med. Dent. Sci.; Vol. 05/ Issue 45/ June 06, 2016 Page 2940-43.