Abstract:
The mechanisms for the aetiology and pathobiology
of allergy and asthma are currently matters of hot
debate in the scientific world. Each week it seems
that a new theory for their origins is proposed, new
evidence for causation is discovered and new suggestions
for prevention are extrapolated. It is highly
likely that allergy occurs in the human host when tolerance
to environmental allergens fails to occur. This
process is most obvious in early infancy. The link between
allergy and asthma is another leap of faith.
It is most likely that the mechanisms that develop
to predispose a human subject to asthma are only
partly linked to allergy. Other factors and processes
must be occurring at least synergistically to produce
the asthma phenotype. Finally, even when asthma
occurs its phenotypic expression has a myriad of
syndromes. One of the topical phenomena in the
overlay of all of these conditions is vitamin D deficiency
and insufficiency. Again probably, given the
evidence, vitamin D is linked to allergy and asthma
disease states. However, before we rush to attribute
these common problems to a nutritional defect we
need significantly more information that vitamin D
replacement will aid in therapy or prevention. The
risk of not doing so is that the ‘cure’ for asthma is
ascribed to a ‘natural product’ and our patients are
led gullibly off in the wrong direction.
