#19 - Pollen and other allergens can cause cells in the

[est15]

I'm having trouble understanding why (C) is incorrect. The passage says that histamines play no role in the processes by which colds produce their symptoms, so wouldn't antihistamines be ineffective against the symptoms caused by colds?

[KelseyWoods]

Hi est15!

Histamine plays no role in the processes by which colds produce their symptoms, but that doesn't mean that antihistamines are definitely ineffective against congestion caused by colds. We know from the third sentence that "antihistamines have other effects." We don't know what all of these other effects are (drowsiness is just one of them) but, from what we're told in the stimulus, it's possible that one of these other effects might have an effect on the congestion caused by colds.

Answer choice (E) must be true because if antihistamines do have some effect on reducing cold symptoms, it has to be one of the "other effects" of the antihistamines and not the result of blocking the action of histamine.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[mcassidy1]

Why is answer choice a wrong? I took it to mean since pollen and allergens cause histamineand antihistamines treat that, then pollen and allergies don't cause colds.

[James Finch]

Hi M. Cassidy,

The issue with answer choice (A) is that we don't actually know that allergens don't cause colds, we only know that they don't cause cold symptoms via causing the body to release histamine. They could cause cold symptoms via other possible avenues, and we're given no information by the stimulus about their ability to actually cause colds themselves.

Contrast this to (E), which uses the known lack of any link between cold symptoms and histamine to infer that antihistamines cannot affect cold symptoms by blocking the histamine, while leaving open the possibility that other side effects could include effects on cold symptoms.

Hope this clears things up!