The era of allergy

It is very true that we are living in ‘the Era of Allergy’. “The Era of Allergy: Local and Global Insights and Intervention” is the main theme of the Joint Congress of Asia Pacific Association of Allergy, Asthma, and Clinical Immunology (APAAACI) and Asia Pacific Association of Pediatric Allergy, Respiratory, and Immunology (APAPARI) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia during 17th–20th October, 2016 (http://www.apaaaci-kl2016.org). We believe that you can enjoy the state-of-art clinical knowledge and science on allergy, friendship, and the culture of Malaysia during the Joint Congress. Please save the date (early registration until 30th June, 2016)! Drug allergy is increasing as the use of medications increases [1]. What does make drugs recognized as allergens? Yun et al. [2] describe a very nice review article on T-cell-mediated drug hypersensitivity starting from the classical hapten/pro-hapten theory and the danger hypothesis to the pharmacological interaction with immune receptors (p-i) concept and the altered peptide repertoire hypothesis. Readers will also enjoy the current data and the possible mechanisms on the association of HLA alleles and drug hypersensitivity reactions. In this issue of Asia Pacific Allergy, readers will find an article from central China on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of drug allergy among healthcare practitioners [3]. The authors describe the data from the questionnaire survey and conclude that the education is urgently needed to fill the gap between the current knowledge and the real clinical practice on drug allergy. Allergic rhinitis could be the most common allergic disease of which trends can be traced with Google trends search [4]. Readers will find an article from the Philippines on the “Attitudes, practices on allergic rhinitis of three socioeconomic classes of Filipinos in the National Capital Region” [5]. Lei et al. [6] described that obesity was a risk factor for allergic rhinitis in children of Wuhan, China. Readers also find a letter from Finland that need for medication and stuffy nose predicted the severity of allergic rhinitis from the comparison of the severity of symptoms using the numeric rating score and the Rhinasthma questionnaire [7]. Asthma can also affect all ages although its prevalence is especially high in childhood and in the elderly [8]. Asthma is important for its prevalence but also for the socioeconomic burden especia l ly according to the sever i t y and the exacerbations [9, 10]. Bathing is an important life style. Some of our patients complain of the exacerbations of asthma symptoms while others say that they feel comfortable when they are taking a bath. Could the humidity and temperature affect the symptoms of asthma while taking a bath? Very interestingly,