A 30 Years Treatise of Allergies and Asthma in Saudi Arabia (1989-2019)

The scientific and clinical investigations, on both prevalence of allergies and asthma and their possible causative factors in Saudi Arabia, have continued since 1989. Primarily, being a desert country, western scientists and physicians did not believe the existence of a high prevalence of asthma and allergic rhinitis in Saudi Arabia, considering it as a non-specific bronchial hyper reactivity rather than an IgE mediated allergic response to local/regional allergens. In the late 80’s, we started our investigation on prevalence of asthma with an internationally designed questionnaire led by Professor JD Wilson, that time Professor of Clinical Immunology at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At the same time, we started indoor and outdoor aeroallergens monitoring program to evaluate the presence and role of various allergens presents in the environment. Our earlier findings were published [115], followed by many other investigators in the country. We continued our investigation and compared the prevalence data from 9 cities which showed an increasing pattern of asthma and allergic rhinitis nationally (Figure 1).