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Hormonal allergy
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Hormonal allergy is one of the most insidious and difficult to differentially diagnosed types of allergies. The insidiousness of this type of allergy is the blurring of the symptoms, the cyclicity of the occurrence and quite regular self-healing. The clinical picture of the hormonal allergy can be masked for the manifestations of food, household allergies, with a high degree of probability, its primary manifestations will be diagnosed by the therapist as a seasonal somatic disease.
[How does hormonal allergy develop?
However, hormonal allergy has indisputable signs of serious violations of the immune response. The human immune system, unfortunately, is capable of failure and the formation of various immunopathological processes, the main ones are immune deficiency, or immunodeficiency, and a hyperimmune response, that is, an allergic reaction. Due to the fact that with the hormonal allergy the allergen is produced by the human body and is in the bloodstream, such an immune reaction directed against its own protein complexes is called an autoimmune reaction.
The hormonal background of a person is subject to cyclic changes (for example, ovulation cycles in women), and random, unpredictable fluctuations associated with the life of the individual (for example, the release of adrenaline and norepinephrine in stressful situations). The development of autoimmune reactions to the change of their own hormonal background is possible for any person, however, the diagnosis of the appearance of urticaria after experiencing stressful conditions is hampered by the irregularity of the emergence of the stress conditions themselves, so the hormone allergy is most easily monitored by the example of the female ovulatory cycle.
How is hormonal allergy manifested?
In some women who suffered hives of unknown etiology, due to stable and predictable changes in the hormonal background, the syndrome of ADD - autoimmune progesterone dermatitis - was identified and described. After ovulation in the ovary, the yellow body (luteal phase of the cycle) starts to form at the egg's exit site, which is associated with an increase in the level of progesterone in the blood. It was during this period that some women complained of skin deterioration, hyperemia (redness), pruritus and rash, and lesions (ulceration) of mucous membranes were recorded in single cases. There were no cases of the appearance of APD during pregnancy. There is also estrogenic hormonal allergy. This type of allergy causes the appearance of dermatitis during pregnancy, is included in the complex of "premenstrual syndrome".
How is hormonal allergy recognized?
To clarify the diagnosis of "hormonal allergies" it is customary to carry out allergic tests with appropriate hormonal drugs. Treatment of this type of allergy is usually carried out by the method of sensitization, in extremely rare cases with persistently persisting symptoms are treated with hormonal drugs. Provocators of the development of the mechanism of hormonal allergies can be various changes in the hormonal background, for example, pregnancy, treatment with hormonal drugs, the transferred stress state.
Classical cases of hormonal allergy manifestation are weighting of asthma symptoms after psychoemotional stresses. To clarify the stratification of the symptomatology of different types of allergies with increasing symptoms of asthma, it is possible by testing the level of the corresponding immunoglobulins.
To date, it can be argued that hormonal allergy is quite widespread, and modern medicine takes into account its symptoms in the treatment of complex diseases. However, this area of allergology is still in the stage of dynamic development and will soon bring us many more discoveries.