इम्यूनोलॉजी: वर्तमान शोध

अमूर्त

Lab Allergy Testing: Assessing Frequency of Food and Environmental Allergens in Pakistani Population

Farooq Ghani

Introduction: Food and environmental allergies are common in childhood and adults. It has been suggested that the magnitude of an allergen specific IgE result can improve diagnostic usefulness, but this has been addressed in only a few tertiary challenge-based studies. Objective: The aim of this study is to assess the frequency of food and environmental allergens in our population. Methods: The study population consisted of 88 individuals (male: 47 and female: 41). The study was conducted in the clinical laboratory, department of pathology and microbiology, Aga Khan University Hospital from may 2009, till May 2010. Sera of patients positive for total IgE were tested for allergen specific IgE levels by immulite 2000, 3gAllergyTM Results: There were a total of 27 allergens tested on 88 individuals having positive total IgE. We have analyzed the data on two cutoffs of allergen specific IgE i.e. moderate (0.7-3.49 kU/L) and high (3.5-17.49 kU/L). The results suggest that in moderate reactivity the most common allergen from environmental panel was dog epithelium (46.6%), mites (33%), cockroach (17%) and from food panel was egg white (23.9%), milk (22.7%)and soybean (13.6%) but in high reactivity the commonest allergen was mites (6.8%),cockroach (4.5%),cat dander epithelium (3.4%),D. farinae (3.4%), molds (3.4%) and weeds (3.4%) from environmental panel and egg white (2.3%), peanuts (2.3%) and shrimps (2.3%) from food panel. At very high reactivity (>52.50 kU/L) most common environmental allergens seen were mites (2.3%), cat dander epithelium (1.1%) and common food allergens were shrimps (1.1%) and peanuts (1.1%). Conclusion: Results generated from our study showed that there is high frequency of environmental and food allergies in our patients and total IgE levels are correlating with specific IgE levels.