North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Thomas Olenio <tolenio@sentex.net>]

Lucky Pittman wrote:

> At 11:09 AM 05/02/2002 -0400, Tom wrote:
> >There are people who have no reaction to poison ivy.  They can pull it
> >with their bare hands.
>
> There is an immunologic phenomenon called 'oral tolerance'.  The gist of it
> is, if one is exposed to a potential allergen, via an oral route,
> particularly at a young age, your immune system is less likely to
> 'recognize' that allergen as 'foreign'.  Those of us who gained our initial
> exposures via the cutaneous(skin) route were destined to develop the itchy
> rash in response to subsequent escposures to urushiol.

Hi,

My grandfather had no allergic reaction to poison ivy.  I don't know how he 
acquired his
immunity, I just know there are people out there who can remove it manually, 
without having an
reaction.

I can get a poison ivy rash just thinking about it, so his immunity wasn't 
passed to me. (smile)

Later,
Tom

_______________________________________________
nafex mailing list
nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Most questions can be answered here:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex
File attachments are accepted by this list; please do not send binary files, 
plain text ONLY!
Message archives are here:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/nafex
To view your user options go to: 
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/nafex/XXXX@XXXX (where XXXX@XXXX is 
YOUR email address)
NAFEX web site:   http://www.nafex.org/