Communication years ago...		.. and communication today!
Instead of your skin ...		...the microarray indicates your allergy!

What kind of advantages does the AllergySensor- offer compared to other allergy tests?

In comparison to other blood tests the AllergySensor,  is not only screening the IgE (i.e. only birch pollen), it offers assessment of all potential allergic triggering substances in the blood serum!
The proportional clarification of IgE and IgG4 provides the physician information for determining the specific therapy proposals as well as the possibility to verify the positive or negative process of a specific immune therapy.

The advantage of an In Vitro examination is, that the patient does not come in direct contact with the allergens at any time and therefore there is no risk of releasing an allergic reaction like an anaphylactic shock.
The ImmunoCAP^® ISAC, an Immune Solid Phase Allergen Chip, is based on the most advanced biochip technology and was developed by international leading allergy scientists. It is the first allergy test based on a microchip registered for in-vitro diagnosis in Europe. Contrary to conventional test systems employing crude extracts produced from animal hair, pollen, mites, foods or latex for the detection of allergy-related antibodies (it was proved i.e. that animal hair allergen extracts contained mite allergens - which has lead to a false conclusion).  This Allergy-Test contains only highly purified single allergen molecules either in natural or recombinant form.
This precise diagnostic is the main basis for deciding on a specific immune therapy!

Specific Immune Therapy (SIT)

To verify an immunologic efficiency an IgE versus IgG4 test is necessary!

Assumption:
1. Patient with a confirmed birch pollen allergy
2. Verifying the applicability of a birch pollen specific immune therapy
3. Patient with a high compatibility for a SIT
4. After measuring IgE and IgG4 antibodies , start of the therapy with birch extracts
5. Check up of IgE and IgG4 every 3 months
6. The increase of IgG4 and the decrease of IgE illustrates the immunological affectivity of the SIT

What kind of information does the AllergySensor  provide?

The @@@as@@ ascertains the personal sensitization profile as well as cross reactions and multiple sensitizations. For example, persons with a birch pollen allergy often react allergic to foods which contain similar substances like birch pollen (i.e. apple, carrot, cellery).
Such cross reactions present a dangerous potential, easily predicted by AllergySensor .

 AllergySensor enables the physician

• an exact determination of the responsible allergens, all in one step
• a specific profile for the best treatment (i.e. medication or an SIT)
• recommendation of prophylactic actions in order to avoid or minimize allergy symptoms, i. e. by elaminating contact with the allergens.

Interview with

Prof. Dr. Adriano Mari
Chairman of the EAACI Allergy Diagnosis Interest Group
Head of the Center for Clinical and Experimental Allergology
IDI‐IRCCS, Room 272, Via dei Monti di Creta 104
I‐00167 Rome, Italy

AllergySensor: Advantages of Component resolved diagnosis (CRD) 

Q: What is the advantage of CRD for the clinical everyday practice?

A: When you see a patient reporting fruit allergy, for instance peach allergy, she/he wants to know the risk of unwanted exposure to peaches. If you test a peach extract you get a single information: peach allergy. If you draw the patient’s profile by using a panel of peach allergen you may say “you are peach LTP positive, you have to avoid peaches at your best as you are at risk of severe allergic reactions not only with peaches” or “you are sensitized to peach profilin, it’s a pretty common sensitization but it caused very mild local (mouth) symptoms and some pollen-related sneezing. You may go on eating fruit without the risk of severe reactions”.

Q: How does the CRD approach influence the treatment of your patients if it does so?

A: When you see a patient with few sensitization to major allergens from a single organism (e.g. grass pollen), you may decide to treat your patient with immunotherapy with more success as it’s now reasonable that most reliable extracts for immunotherapy do contain major allergens. At the same time when a patient shows multiple allergen sensitization including minor allergens, the risk of an unsuccessful treatment is high. At the moment there are no reports on minor allergen concentration in commercial allergenic extracts.

Q: How do you explain the results to the patients? In particular, when the patient reacts to a lot of allergens positively?

A: It’s very easy and patients seem to understand better than when they were tested with extracts. For instances, I carried out some studies on multiple allergen sensitization. At the time of allergenic extracts the reactions to all those tests were really hard to explain. The patient was generally astonished and the doctor (myself) as well. How I could explain a positive skin test to cockroaches when the patient claims that her house is one of the cleanest around the world, and she wants only to know about her reactions to shrimps. Nowadays, we have IgE recognition of several allergens belonging to groups of homologous molecules (e.g. tropomyosins, profiling, calcium-binding proteins, group 1 mite allergens etc). This IgE co-recognition mirrors the immune system response. Thus, if the immune system starts to produce IgE against an epitope from shrimp tropomyosin and this epitope is also carried by the same molecule from cockroaches, you may say to the patient “ I know your’re not exposed to cockroaches but you’re sensitization to shrimps causes IgE recognition of a molecule in cockroach extract. If you start sneezing in other indoor environment just ask about cockroach infestation.” Moreover, there is a general trend to multiple allergenic molecule sensitization. We have the tool to understand and trace this phenomenon.

Q: How do patients accept the new method?

A: They are very happy about that. They use to ask “Doctor, is it real that you draw a tiny amount of my two-month aged child and I get information on hundreds of allergens including inhalants, foods, latex etc. That has never been possible at once. I have an older child, he had to undergo three or four runs of skin tests before having all performed.” We have definitely overcome the problem of stopping allergy treatment several times to get a full diagnosis.

Q: How do you see the future of allergy diagnosis in a perspective of ten years from now?

A: We have a great chance to have all allergists performing a molecule-based test before any therapeutic decision. Implementing automation we could have some kind of real time diagnosis. Furthermore, we could compare results from around the world without the bias of non overlapping reagent selection. At this regard I see many surprising results by testing different populations with the same panel of arrayed allergens. This is not only the wish of a researcher, but the need for the community to understand allergic diseases