By Duncan Walker BBC News Online Magazine

Celebrity gossip, true life stories, triumph over tragedy - the staple diet fed to readers of many a glossy magazine.

The UK already has hundreds of such offerings, suggesting that if the market for tea break reading is not already saturated, then it has little room for upstarts.

But wait. What if that pop star had a peanut allergy, or the heart warming story involved eczema?

This week just such a title appears on the supermarket shelves, somewhere among healthy living magazines like Zest and Top Sante.

Twenty years ago it probably wouldn't even have made a pamphlet, but today the publishers can fill dozens of pages and are confident they will sell tens of thousands of copies.

Welcome to Allergy magazine, a thoroughly modern read.

Corrie asthma

Editor Charmaine Yabsley, a former Daily Mail good health editor, is excited about the title's commercial launch.

She's got Coronation Street actress Nikki Sanderson on her asthma; sisters Kelly and Katie on losing 11 stone after identifying their wheat intolerance and Countdown presenter Carol Vorderman with her favourite gluten-free recipes.

Mums are the ones packing the school lunches and checking the birthday party menu for things that may set off an allergy Charmaine Yabsley

If it all sounds just that little bit too narrow, Ms Yabsley points to the rapid increase in the number of specialised titles like Slimming World or Weight Watchers Magazine in recent years.

It's no longer the case that people just go out and buy Harpers and Queen for their monthly magazine fix, she says.

And there's also the small matter that Britons really are more allergic than in the past, with about one third of the population - almost 20 million people - affected.

"The diets we follow and the lifestyles we lead have greatly contributed to the number of allergies and the number of children affected," says Ms Yabsley.

Classrooms are increasingly becoming "nut-free zones" because of nut allergies; hay fever and eczema rates are soaring. The list goes on.

'Old fashioned'

Pitched as a "general lifestyle" magazine, the title's print run of 40,000 is aimed squarely at concerned mums.

It seems that while allergies are very 2004, dealing with them is somewhat less up to date.

"Mums are the ones packing the school lunches and checking the birthday party menu for things that may set off an allergy," says the editor.

"It's very old fashioned, but it's still very much the woman's role."

One third of Britons has some kind of allergy

Whether the UK needs such a specialised consumer magazine is something the newsstand customers will have to decide.

But maybe a letter from Evelyn of North Yorkshire, printed in the current issue, can offer a clue.

"In the article 'Holiday Countdown' the writer encourages people to use wet-wipes to remove possible allergens from trays and tables when travelling," she begins.

"I suffer from multiple chemical sensitivity and someone sitting next to me in an aircraft and wielding a wet-wipe is highly likely to cause me to have an unpleasant reaction."