MANILA, Philippines — Research using Google search inquiries found that latex allergy is the most common allergy in the Philippines.
Insurance provider William Russell conducted a global research about common allergies in 100 populated countries and found that 10 to 40% of a nation's population is allergic to something.
In the Philippines, the most common allergen is from latex — found in balloons, bandages, rubber bands and condoms — which also happens to be tied second-most common global allergy with penicillin allergy in 19 countries each.
Some foods that have protein in them like bananas, avocados, chestnuts and celery are cross latex reactive foods that can trigger a reaction.
Research also found that eight to 17% of people whose profession require rubber gloves suffer from latex allergy, which is prevalent in other countries like Cambodia, Saudia Arabia and Egypt.
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Online inquiries about latex allergies in the Philippines made up an average of 78,500 searches from the total 507,200 searches around the world.
The most common allergen found in the documented countries was pollen allergy, which was number one in 39 countries including India, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Morocco and most European countries.
But when it comes to Google results, the most-searched is being allergic to dogs with 633,000 searches.
Other common global allergies include being allergic to cats and mold. Ethiopia's most common allergy is eggs while for the Ivory Coast its pineapples, and surprisingly ten countries have water allergy has their most common allergen.
Frequent allergies that are searched online, apart from those mentioned above, are oral allergy syndrome (356,300 searches), milk allergies (338,300 searches) and peanut allergy (266,400 searches).
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