ORLANDO, Fla. — While September serves as a transition from summer to fall, it is also peak season for allergies. 

What You Need To Know

  • Allergy medications are often focused on treating symptoms, but this research could be a breakthrough

  • 100 million American suffer from allergies

  • April, May, and September are peak allergy months

The sneezing, coughing, burning eyes — we’ve all been there. Especially for the 100 million Americans who suffer allergies.

Researchers believe climate change may make it worse and University of Central Florida researchers are trying to change that in a unique way.

Dr. Justine Tigno-Aranjuez is leading a research project at the University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine to find relief for people with allergies.

“We try to find basically the very beginning of the events of how an allergic response is elicited,” Tigno-Aranjuez said.

By finding what triggers an allergy attack, Tigno-Aranjuez and her team hope to learn what can be done to not just treat symptoms of allergies, but to block an allergy attack from even starting.

She was inspired to begin this research while attending a conference as a graduate student in Cleveland.

“Our most recent work, what we found, is a novel receptor for dust mite and dust mite is the most common allergy associated with allergic asthma. So if we find a new receptor, that’s a potential new target for therapy,” Tigno-Aranjuez said.

Finding an allergy blocker — that goes beyond allergy symptom treatment — would be a breakthrough, especially for allergy sufferers like Michael Johnson.

The trials of an allergy suffer

Johnson has taken a lot for help, but what medications can’t fully provide, he’s hopeful researchers can.

“It would be life-changing if it works,” Johnson said. “At the end of the day to do away with symptoms entirely and avoid them that’s better because I’ve done everything I can, got rid of carpets, the Roomba is running twice a day, we have covers on the sheets on the bed and pillows but you can’t avoid it when it’s this bad, absolutely life changing to have something out there to be able to live a normal life.”

A native of Long Island, New York, Johnson and his wife have lived in Florida since 1994.

Florida is home, but home can be a real headache, and Johnson does mean a real headache.

“When pollen is all over, I’m sneezing, eyes are watering, dust when inside the house — pretty much everything and anything. I feel like Florida is trying to kill me. It’s one of those things, it just doesn’t stop,” Johnson said.

Inside his home is not much of an escape, either.

The career Disney manager says the effects of allergies affect every bit of his life. He gets regular allergy shots and injections every two weeks and has a pharmacy’s worth of medications.

“If you ever go to a pulmonologist's office or allergist, they have this big chart of medications. I’ve run through all of those, gotten to the bottom. And the last thing is bronchial thermoplasty, and actually stick a probe into the lungs. They do one section at a time, three visits to the operating room, and they heat up and open airways. So pretty much when you’ve run out medications and not much else to do,” Johnson said.