On the Diagnosis of Food Allergy in Adults — A Comparison Between DBPCFC and Intragastric Provocations

Abstract

The diagnosis of immediate adverse reactions to food (food allergy) depends exclusively on the outcome of double-blind, placebo-controlled food challenges (DBPCFC) [1, 2, 4, 5 (to be published), 9]. The diagnostic value of a skin prick test (SPT), radio-allergosorbent test (RAST) and histamine release from basophils (HR) has not yet been fully elucidated and cannot replace DBPCFC [3, 6, 10]. This also applies to a new technique, the intragastric provocation under endoscopic control (IPEC), developed by Reimann and Ring [7, 8], although the authors reported a very close correlation between the results of IPEC and DBPCFC. As this new technique might prove to be more valuable than SPT, RAST, or HR in the diagnosis of food allergy, we therefore compared the outcome of IPEC with that of DBPCFC in our adult patients.