Where your DNA places you among other people, and the studies behind it.
Not tailored to your result, and not medical advice
Confirm Which Allergen Triggers You: Symptoms are driven by allergen-specific IgE, so avoidance only works when it targets the allergen actually involved. Skin prick tests and blood specific IgE detect sensitization rather than clinical allergy, and a review of diagnostic tools in Frontiers in Allergy concludes that an approach based only on those atopy tests is associated with a significant rate of misdiagnosis. The same review describes local allergic rhinitis, where the nose reacts on allergen challenge despite negative skin prick and serum IgE results, so a negative test does not always mean no allergy. If you are guessing at your triggers, describing the symptom pattern and its timing to a clinician is a reasonable next step. Frontiers in Allergy (PMC)
Reduce Everyday Pollen Contact: Pollen dose is one of the few parts of this trait you control directly. NHS self-care guidance for hay fever includes keeping windows and doors shut as much as possible, showering and changing clothes after being outside to wash pollen off, not drying clothes outside where they can catch pollen, vacuuming regularly and dusting with a damp cloth, and wearing wraparound sunglasses. The same guidance says symptoms are usually worse between late March and September, and especially when it is warm, humid and windy. None of this removes the underlying allergy, but it lowers the amount of allergen reaching your nose and eyes. NHS
Rinse Your Nose With Saline: Nasal saline rinsing is a non-drug self-care measure with a Cochrane review behind it. The review pooled 14 studies and 747 participants, 499 children and 248 adults, and concluded that saline irrigation may reduce patient-reported disease severity compared with no saline at up to three months. Two of the included studies, covering 240 children, reported no adverse effects. The authors rated the overall quality of the evidence low or very low, so this is best treated as cheap and low risk rather than as strongly proven. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (PMC)
Avoid Tobacco Smoke Exposure: A systematic review and meta-analysis in PLOS Medicine drew on 97 studies of allergic rhinitis. It found passive smoke exposure associated with roughly 10% higher risk overall (RR 1.10, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.15), and active smoking associated with about 40% higher risk in children and adolescents (RR 1.40, 95% CI 1.24 to 1.59). The same analysis linked active and passive smoke exposure to allergic dermatitis as well. These are observational associations rather than proof of cause, and the estimate for active smoking in adults ran the other way (RR 0.90, 95% CI 0.82 to 0.99), so the clearest case is for keeping smoke away from children. PLOS Medicine (PMC)
Be Realistic About Mite Control: An updated Cochrane review of house dust mite avoidance for perennial allergic rhinitis pooled nine trials and 501 participants, covering impermeable bedding covers, acaricides and HEPA filters. Seven of the nine trials reported significant reductions in measured mite load compared with control, but the reviewers found the trials small and of poor methodological quality, which made definitive recommendations difficult. They concluded that interventions achieving substantial reductions in mite load may offer some benefit for rhinitis symptoms, while impermeable bedding used in isolation is unlikely to prove effective. The honest read is that mite control is worth trying as a whole package rather than as a single purchase, and with modest expectations. Allergy (PubMed)
How much of this is genetic?
Genetics explains 50% of why people differ in this trait. The rest is environment, daily habits and chance.
Heritability estimate: Twin and family studies of allergic rhinitis and atopy; Ferreira et al. 2017, Nature Genetics
Background and further reading
Allergic disease describes an exaggerated immune response to substances that are harmless to most people, known as allergens. Common forms include allergic rhinitis (hay fever), which causes sneezing, a runny or congested nose, and itchy eyes; atopic dermatitis (eczema); and food and drug allergies. These conditions frequently cluster together in the same individuals and families, a tendency often called atopy. Allergic rhinitis alone affects an estimated 10-30% of adults worldwide, and rates have risen in industrialized countries over recent decades. Symptoms are typically driven by immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies that trigger the release of histamine and other inflammatory mediators from mast cells.
Genetic Basis: Twin and family studies show that allergic diseases run strongly in families. Heritability estimates for allergic rhinitis and related atopic conditions vary widely across studies but are commonly reported between roughly 33% and 75%, with several twin cohorts placing it higher. A landmark genome-wide association study by Ferreira and colleagues treated asthma, hay fever, and eczema as a single shared allergic-disease phenotype and identified 136 risk variants across roughly 100 genetic loci, most of which influence immune regulation. Key implicated genes include those in the interleukin-33 pathway (IL33 and its receptor IL1RL1), TSLP, the HLA region on chromosome 6, and FLG (filaggrin), which governs the integrity of the skin and mucosal barrier. Because these variants act on shared immune and barrier pathways, a person's genetic tendency toward one allergic condition often overlaps with their tendency toward others.
Environmental Factors: Genes set a baseline tendency, but environment strongly shapes whether allergies develop and how severe they become. Early-life exposures matter: the hygiene hypothesis proposes that reduced microbial diversity in early childhood biases the developing immune system toward allergic responses, and children raised on traditional farms with rich microbial exposure tend to have fewer allergies. Allergen exposure, air pollution, tobacco smoke, respiratory infections, diet, and the timing of introducing foods in infancy all influence allergic risk. For people who already have allergies, identifying and reducing exposure to specific triggers such as pollen, dust mites, mold, and pet dander is the main way to limit symptoms.
The published research behind your score, and the variants it draws on.
2 published scores from 1 study
The allergies score combines 2 polygenic scores drawn from 1 published study.
These traits are influenced by some of the same genes and variants as this one
Content updated August 2026.
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