Drug allergy and other drug reactions: Are you at risk?

You've just taken a new medication. Within minutes, you're having trouble breathing and your vision is blurry. You might be experiencing a drug allergy — a sometimes-serious event caused not by a medication's therapeutic action or side effects, but by your immune system's misdirected attack on the medication.

True drug allergies — as opposed to nonallergic adverse reactions — account for fewer than 10 percent of all the drug reactions that land people in the hospital or develop during hospital stays. But because drug allergies may be severe enough to require specific anti-allergy treatment, it's important to distinguish them from other drug reactions. Before you take a new medication or a drug you haven't used in some time, ask your doctor if you could be allergic to it. That goes double if you've had a previous reaction to any drug.
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