Click here to see in dynamic how sensitization process develops or come back to it after you have red the detailed description of this process written below.
To start, you must know that your disease has started some time before you have had any symptoms. Its true beginning was the first time when you have come in contact with the allergen. This is how everything started…
Most often we come in contact with the allergen through our skin, nose, airways or gut. Upon penetration in one of these organs, the allergens encounter the network of dendritic cells. In persons prone to develop allergy, dendritic cells mistake the allergen with an aggressor and they think that they have to trigger the alarm and warn their superiors about the imminence of an enemy attack. Consequently they take-up the allergen and show it to the Th cells.
In persons predisposed to allergy, Th cells also have a problem in differentiating the allergen from a true aggressor so, once they become aware of its presence and nature, they start signalling the soldiers and officers under their command (in fact the other immune cells) to start preparing for the battle. The first cell they call under arms is the B lymphocyte; they teach B cells how the enemy looks like and then they give them the order to prepare IgE antibodies which they think would be necessary to fight this kind of enemy.
Following T cell orders, B cells start producing IgE. When released from the B cell IgE spread in the surrounding tissues floating freely around the cells until they encounter a mast cell. These cells have a particular affinity for the IgE and therefore, upon their encounter the IgE become bound on the cells’ surface. In this way IgE becomes like an antennae thorough which mast cell can be warned when the allergen is attacking and so they know when to start firing the substances stored in their granules. (Remember that the antibodies are produced to match perfectly the aggressor and therefore a cell armed with them will have a much better and faster ability to identify the enemy.).
This process of arming the mast cell with IgE and preparing it for the allergen attack is called sensitization. During a fight with a true aggressor, sensitization would strengthen the body defence, making it ready to react fast to the attack of the aggressor. However in allergy this is the first step in a chain of wrong immune reactions which will transform a useful, protective process into a detrimental one, causing itself a disease -allergy.
As you might have realised, during the sensitization process there is no real fight between our body and the allergen. It is just the preparation of the immune system to fight the aggressor in case that its attack would be persistent or repeated. Sensitization is a silent process which occurs without anyone being aware that it is taking place inside his/her body. It can take days, weeks or months for the sensitization to take place.
In some people (the lucky ones) sensitization is not followed by the development of an allergy. Most of them do not even know that they are sensitized unless they undergo an allergy test performed by a doctor. These persons do not develop symptoms when the come in contact with the allergen.
If you are one of these people you should not consider yourself as a sick person. Being sensitized means that you have a higher risk to develop an allergy than a person who is not sensitized but it doesn’t mean that you will certainly develop it. Since for the moment it is not known why some sensitized persons develop allergy while others do not there is nothing you can do to prevent the evolution of the disease in case that this will occur. You do not need to follow any treatment, nor you need to take any special measures to avoid contact with allergens and you should enjoy your life like a normal healthy person.
If in your family, especially among your first degree relatives, there are persons suffering from allergy you have high chances to be one of these sensitized people. This can be very easily checked by undergoing an allergy test that can be done by a doctor specialized in allergic diseases.
However, in many people immune response to allergen does not stop to sensitization but is taken further to a full allergic attack.