Suffering from any type of allergy is a psychological burden. You should constantly avoid your allergen which could have a lot of impact on your habits and live your life to the fullest. In cases where it is completely impossible to avoid, things get worse. Take for example allergic rhinitis, constant runny nose, watery, itchy or red eyes, headaches and trouble sleeping that might just be too much to bear at times. This could significantly reduce the quality of life of those affected and, in extreme cases, anaphylactic shock due to exposure to allergens could be life-threatening. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Allergies are the sixth leading cause of chronic disease in the United States, and approximately 50 million Americans are estimated to suffer from one form of allergy or another. every year. Currently, antihistamines and steroids are the mainstays of treatment, but they don't seem to help much. This is especially true for long-term users, and these are only temporary interventions. Much work is being done within the scientific community to expand treatment options and eventually find a permanent solution to this threat. Here are some of the new discoveries that shine a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Immunotherapy or allergy vaccines. Do not deviate from the basic principle of vaccines, that is, exposing an individual to small amounts of a foreign body in the hope that the immune system will become familiar with it and become strong enough to prevent a major attack. Allergy vaccines work by exposing sufferers to small amounts of an allergen over a period of time to gradually build up a tolerance to the specific allergen. Although this procedure may take years before treatment is complete, the fact that it offers hope for a permanent solution is very promising. Allergy vaccines are currently administered by injection, although there is a growing body of evidence and growing popularity for sublingual immunotherapy. Already, ragweed and grass pollen tablets have been approved by the FDA and additional research is still underway. Allergy drops have also been developed for certain allergens, although they are currently administered off-label as more research is underway into their safety and effectiveness. Immunotherapy has shown promise for the treatment of rhinitis and asthma caused by certain allergens, and evidence supporting its benefits in other forms of allergies continues to emerge. Gene therapy. Virtually the entire system of the human body functions at the genetic level, and gene therapy has shown potential in the treatment of many chronic diseases. Allergies are not left out. Although still experimental, researchers at the University of Queensland have developed a genetic modification technique that could potentially "turn off" the immune response to allergens and completely cure diseases such as asthma. The technique erases the memory of immune T cells so that when they come into contact with the allergen, they fail to recognize it as foreign and therefore no immune response is triggered. The treatment showed very good results in the animals tested, but it remains to be seen how successful it would be when.