Most of us go through childhood without ever experiencing an allergy – we could leave the tissues at home. But that can change as we age. For some people, allergies wait to arrive until we’re adults or even seniors.
More than one out of four children living in the United States have some form of allergy, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Most often it’s a seasonal allergy, which affects 19% of U.S. children, while 6% have a food allergy.
For some allergy types, those rates rise with age. For example, the percentage of people experiencing seasonal allergies rises to 26% for U.S. adults. And sometimes adults can experience new allergies in their 50s and 60s and beyond, or their allergies may grow more severe. These “adult-onset allergies” can be mysterious and worrisome for those of us who’ve never experienced allergy symptoms before.
And to make things more confusing, sometimes older adults experience symptoms that mimic allergies but are caused by something else. For example, a 2019 survey study found that one in five U.S. adults think they have a food allergy because they experienced an adverse reaction, but only half of them actually do.
“Allergies can affect people throughout their lifespan,” says Jenny Stitt, MD, an associate professor in the University of Colorado Department of Medicine’s Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. “The older you get, sometimes the more allergy mimickers there can be. But for people who truly have environmental allergies, we’ve got a lot of great options to help you have a good quality of life.”
To better understand adult-onset allergies, and what is and isn’t an allergy, we took our questions to Stitt, who also is director of the Allergy, Asthma, and Clinical Immunology Practice at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital.