Previously healthy migrants and visitors allergic to Australia in a medical mystery

Previously healthy migrants and visitors are developing asthma and other allergies after arriving in Australia and researchers can’t explain why.

While they are yet to crack the medical mystery, one theory is when people don’t encounter the same allergens back home, they develop allergies after coming to Australia.

‘People of Asian background coming to Australia, a very typical pattern is the first five years they are OK, between five and 10 years they start getting hayfever, and then they develop wheezing and asthma,’ asthma specialist Professor Francis Thien told The Age. 

Hope Carnevali (pictured), a 20-year-old law student died in the arms of her devastated family as they desperately attempted CPR in Melbourne’s 2016 thunderstorm asthma disaster

Why so many previously healthy migrants get asthma and other allergies remains a medical mystery (stock image)

Why so many previously healthy migrants get asthma and other allergies remains a medical mystery (stock image)

He is the co-author of a study into world’s largest, most catastrophic epidemic thunderstorm asthma event that occurred in Melbourne in November 2016.

The study was published earlier this month and presented at the coronial inquest into the disaster this week.

The extremely rare phenomenon was virtually unknown and has been recorded just four times in the past 30 years.

A rare combination of strong winds, a high pollen count and moisture in the air sparked a deadly asthma outbreak.

Of the ten people who died, six of them were born in India or other parts of Asia.

The report also stated 19 of the 35 patients admitted to intensive care were born outside Australia, including ten from Asian or subcontinental countries.

Omar Moujalled, 18, who had just finished his year 12 exams, was one of 10 people killed in Melbourne's freak thunderstorm asthma event in November 2016

Omar Moujalled, 18, who had just finished his year 12 exams, was one of 10 people killed in Melbourne’s freak thunderstorm asthma event in November 2016

‘Within 30 hours, there were 3365 excess respiratory-related presentations to emergency departments, and 476 excess asthma-related admissions to hospital, especially individuals of Indian or Sri Lankan birth and south-east Asian birth,’ the report findings state. 

The report revealed a ‘strikingly consistent predominance of Asian or Indian ethnicity’ in hospital admissions. 

‘This was an unexpected finding that raises important questions but there are important caveats,’ the report states.

‘Confounding factors might have played a role such as poor education and knowledge about asthma in migrant populations, varying cultural beliefs about asthma, unequal access to medical care and variable adherence with preventer medications.’  

Studies have documented a significantly higher prevalence of seasonal allergic rhinitis in Asians living in Australia than in Australian-born non-Asians, according to the report.

‘After 10 years in Australia, up to 60 per cent of south-east Asian immigrants developed hay fever and 15 per cent had symptoms of asthma,’ it states.

The thunderstorm asthma disaster is currently the subject of a coronial inquest, which heard this week that many of the fatal victims developed their allergies only after moving to Australia. 

Research published by Dr Roland Leung in 1996, found that Asian migrants were almost twice as likely to have hayfever as people born in Australia and that as many as six in 10 would develop spring hayfever within three years.  

Dr Leung is surprised follow-up investigations didn’t uncovered more.

‘Should it have been done, it might have prevented some of the thunderstorm asthma attacks in subsequent years,’ he told The Age. 



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