ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

Panminerva Medica 1999 June;41(2):115-7

Copyright © 2000 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Measurement of specific IgEs in the diagnosis of drug allergy

Anania A.

From the Second Chair of Internal Medicine Allergology Out-Patient’s Clinic Department of Internal Medicine, Turin University, Turin, Italy

Back­ground. The anam­ne­sis and, in cer­tain cas­es, ­skin ­tests are indis­pens­able meth­ods for the cor­rect diag­no­sis of aller­gy to ­drugs. How­ev­er, in ­some cas­es, ­these two tech­niques ­alone, ­prove insuf­fi­cient in achiev­ing reli­able pre­dic­tive ele­ments for ­drug aller­gies. ­Besides, the use of ­skin test­ing is ­often dis­cou­raged, due to the poten­tial ­risks ­involved.
Meth­ods. In ­this ­study, the diag­nos­tic effi­cien­cy of the meas­ure­ment of spe­cif­ic IgE for a select­ed ­group of 13 ­drugs was eval­u­at­ed. The ­test was car­ried out on 96 ­patients show­ing clin­i­cal ­signs direct­ly attrib­ut­able to the admin­is­tra­tion of one par­tic­u­lar ­drug (in 38 of the 96 cas­es) or ­more ­drugs (58/96 cas­es). The symp­toms ­appeared ­after a ­week or ­more ­from the begin­ning of the ­drug treat­ment; ­this ­time inter­val is com­pat­ible ­with the devel­op­ment of an ­immune ­response.
­Results. The ­drugs ­most fre­quent­ly caus­ing ­adverse reac­tions ­were sal­i­cyl­ic ­acid, noram­i­dop­y­rin, pro­pi­phen­a­zone, oth­er non-ster­oid­al ­anti-inflam­ma­to­ry ­drugs (­NSAIDs), tri­met­o­prim, anti­bi­o­tics. ­RAST was ­applied to 13 ­drugs and was pos­i­tive for at ­least one of the ­drugs test­ed in 31/96 ­patients.
Con­clu­sions. The ­results of the ­study con­firm the valid­ity of the ­RAST tech­nique as a use­ful ele­ment in improv­ing and mak­ing the over­all diag­no­sis of aller­gies to ­drugs ­more reli­able.