Allergic diseases in the elderly: biological characteristics and main immunological and non-immunological mechanisms

2017

Life expectancy and the number of elderly people are progressively increasing around the world. Together with other pathologies, allergic diseases also show an increasing incidence in geriatric age. This is partly due to the growing emphasis on a more accurate and careful diagnosis of the molecular mechanisms that do not allow to ignore the real pathogenesis of many symptoms until now unknown, and partly to the fact that the allergic people from 20 years ago represent the elderly population now. Moreover, environmental pollution predisposes to the onset of allergic asthma and dermatitis which are the result of internal pathologies more than the expression of allergic manifestations. At the …