Yes, there is such a thing as an allergy to vibration

I am a fidgety guy. I constantly drum my fingers or tap my feet, the natural result of my youth spent playing drums. My tapping is innocuous, though it may annoy my neighbors in lab. However, in people with a genetic condition called vibratory urticaria, such tapping would leave them with a bad case of hives on their hand. Why? Vibratory urticaria is essentially an allergic reaction to vibration of the skin. In a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found a single mutation in the DNA of people with vibratory urticaria that may be at fault. This mutation results in a protein that is so fragile that simple vibration breaks it apart, resulting in an allergic reaction to vibration.

To understand why vibratory urticaria occurs, it helps to understand what happens during an allergic reaction.