‘Allergy sufferers less likely to contract cancer’

Scientists believe that adverse reactions in allergic people stimulate their immune system,helping to ward off other potentially fatal conditions,Daily Mail reported.

“More work is still needed,but the numbers show that allergy is a statistically significant protective factor,” said Dr Zuber Mulla,an epidemiologist at Texas Tech University,who led the ovarian cancer study.

Medical researchers have long suspected an association between allergies and cancer,but studies have yielded mixed results.

However,in recent years a clearer picture has emerged which suggests there is a major advantage to putting up with allergies,the report said.

Meanwhile,doctors at Cornell University in America have found that children with airborne allergies also had reduced rates of throat,skin,lung and intestinal cancer.

Other research has pointed to a lower risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and stomach cancer,while Harvard epidemiologists observed “a strong inverse relationship” between brain cancer and asthma,eczema,hay fever or allergy.

Canadian studies have showed that having an allergy or hay fever lowered the chances of getting pancreatic cancer by up to 58 per cent,according to the report.

“Allergies are a general activation of our immune systems,” said Dr Ronald Crystal,chief of pulmonary and critical-care medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Centre.

“It’s hard to prove,and I’ve heard some scepticism,but it’s a concept in this field and the studies add to that.”

“It’s better to treat your allergies,which can be pretty serious and in rare instances fatal,” he said,and warned that those with allergies shouldn’t assume they have no chance of getting cancer.