Risk factors
Seasonal allergic rhinitis, also referred to as hay fever, can be promoted by some specific factors:
- Already be asthmatic or have other forms of allergies.
- Having atopic dermatitis (eczema).
- Have one or more family members who have asthma or other asthmatic allergies.
- Living or working in areas that are particularly polluted or contraindicated due to the presence of polluting or allergenic factors.
- Being born prematurely or to a smoking mother, and having suffered from secondhand smoke in the first year of life.
Complications
Complications of allergic rhinitis relate more closely to quality of life than specifically to complaints, which can be:
- hay fever can interfere with a full quality of life, the performance of various work activities, leisure time, and social relationships, because of the annoying and persistent hay fever symptoms, so much so that affected people are forced to give up.
- A worsening of sleep quality, due to the many nighttime awakenings caused by cold symptoms, because of the runny nose of the need to blow it. The consequence is a feeling of malaise and fatigue upon awakening that is not ideal for starting the day.
- A more related complication to the complaints of allergic rhinitis may come from worsening asthma symptoms, with wheezing, persistent cough.
- Sinusitis, the prolonged nasal congestion caused by rhinitis, can result in sinusitis with inflammation and infection of the membrane that surrounds the sinuses.
- Otitis media, more frequent in children, where middle ear infection is favored by the persistence of allergic rhinitis.
Prevention
With hay fever, there is not much prevention to be done, but rather to get away as much as possible from the allergens that trigger it, and to take the effective medications that reduce symptoms, even before the most troublesome complaints arise.
