ALLERGY ATTACK!!!

Are you oversensitive to pollen? Do trees make you sneeze? Then you may be in for this spring's

It's only mid-March, but while Boston is still digging itself out from under the "blizzard of '93", pollen will soon be in the air, bringing with it yet another barrage of Kleenex and antihistamine medications.

But what will stop a runny nose? Which of the hundreds of over-the-counter medications will work? And which won't?

Most importantly, "Why on earth is this happening to me?" will be a common sniffle among the 10 to 15 percent of the population affected by seasonal allergies.

Allergies come most severely in the fall, when plants such as ragweed germinate, and in the spring, when trees and grasses release their pollen into the air.

WBZ-TV meteorologist Bruce W. Schwoegler says that some allergens, such as tree pollen, are in constant supply. But the peak season for the Boston area, says Schwoegler, is late May and early June.

Schwoegler says that dry, breezy, warm days can stimulate a high release of pollen. In the Boston area, oak pollen seems the worst offender, he says.

The body's often violent response to spring is actually a reaction to specific chemicals on pollen known as allergens. Common allergies are the result of hyper-sensitivity to a rather innocuous antigen.

In recent years, Schwoegler has been working with a local allergist, experimenting with methods of forecasting bad allergy days.

To make his predictions, Schwoegler takes into account the forecasts for wind speed, morning humidity, temperature, the pollen counts from the previous year, and cloud cover.

According to Schwoegler, sunlight can stimulate trees to release more pollen, and winds 10 and 20 m.p.h. are the allergen's favorite conditions. Winds much stronger than 20 m.p.h. carry the pollen into the upper atmosphere, far away from the beleaguered lungs of sufferers.

According to Dr. Elliot Israel, an assistant professor of medicine at Boston's Beth-Israel Hospital allergy clinic, a common misconception is sufferers describing allergies as "rose fever." In fact, Israel says, this term is inaccurate because most of the common spring-time allergies are caused by pollen from grasses and trees not roses.

Blooming flowers can serve, however, as a rather colorful and ominous warning that their other friends in the vegetable kingdom are about to release their pollen on the public.

The antibody which recognizes pollen, as well as other common allergens, is a protein called IgE. People with allergies, a genetic trait, have elevated levels of this protein and therefore respond much more quickly and violently to the rather harmless pollen grain.

IgE stimulates a number of chemicals, the most common of which is histamine. Histamine is responsible for a number of rather unsightly and uncomfortable responses in the body. It can act on to make breathing more difficult by stimulating the production of excess mucus in the bronchial tract, and also cause inflammation by enlarging blood vessels.

Doctors and pharmaceutical companies utilize several options to combat annoying symptoms associated with spring-time pollen.

One option is allergy shots, which can be prescribed by an allergist. According to Israel, such shots can be useful.

"[Shots] make you tolerant to the substance, and thus the symptoms are relieved," Israel says.

As anyone who has walked into a drugstore knows, there are a wide assortment of over-the-counter medications claiming to solve your allergy woes and your stuffed-up-nose.

The most common are drugs involving antihistamines, which block or depress the action of histamine.

But as Israel and the warning labels point out, drowsiness can be an unwanted side effect of these drugs. Israel cites several new prescription medications that act without causing the sufferer to wander into dreamland.

According to Dr. Talal A. Chatila, assistant professor of pediatrics and member of the Children's Hospital department of immunology, doctors also use local application of corticol steroids--not to be confused with anabolic steroids, used for "bulking up."

"[Corticol] steroids can be applied locally through inhalers," says Chatila. "Taken by mouth [steroids] can produce harmful side effects. However, the local application minimizes these effects."

Chatila warns that any decongestant that works should only be used for short periods of time. "After more than three days you need to switch to a different medication," he advises.

The problem, he says, lies in the fact that after extended use, decongestants actually create diseases of their own which mimic the symptoms of the allergy they were meant to relieve, leaving the allergy sufferer with double trouble.

Israel cautions against misuse of over-the-counter nasal sprays. These nose sprays, like Afrin, act by constricting the blood vessels in the nose.

But, says Israel, if these nasal sprays are used for more than three or four days in a row, a patient can become dangerously dependent.

"It's like a drug addiction," says Chatila. "If you stop, there's a tremendous backlash."

The dependency arises when patients stop using the sprays, vessels become dilated, causing more pollen than before to come in contact with IgE. This produces a reaction more violent than if no spray had been used at all.

Of course, everyone agrees that the simplest way to avoid sniffing and sneezing, barring medications, is to try and avoid contact with the allergen.

But as Schwoegler points out, not breathing, which may be the only way to avoid contact, is difficult--and may produce fatal side effects.

For allergy sufferers, spring is not all roses. But staying indoors, using medication under the advice of an allergist and having plenty of tissues nearby are all good ways to enjoy the coming season. According to the calendar, spring--and unfortunately, allergy season--is just around the corner.