Heavy Precipitation Prompted This Year’s Particularly Robust Allergy Season

The AP (5/16) reports, “Warnings about the difficult season have come from allergy specialists from New York to Atlanta, Chicago to California.” Heavy snow and rain in “some parts of the country have nourished a profusion of tree pollen, while a sudden shift to warm, sunny weather has made its release more robust.” The deluges and some flooding have also boosted the “volume on mold.”

Individuals Who Have Received Inpatient Allergy Treatment Allergy May Have Increased Risk For Suicide.MedWire (5/16, Cowen) reports that, according to a study published in the May issue of Allergy: European Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, “individuals who have received inpatient allergy treatment are at increased risk for suicide.” After analyzing “data on 27,096 individuals who committed suicide between 1981 and 2006, and 467,571 controls from the general population who were matched for date of birth-, gender-, and time of suicide (20 controls per case),” researchers discovered that “overall, a history of inpatient treatment for allergy predicted suicide completion, with and incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 1.46.”