Abstract
Allergen sensitization is being diagnosed by commonly available methods in clinical practice—skin prick tests (SPTs) and specific immunoglobulin E test (sIgE). Recently, a new thermographic (TH) method for the assessment of SPT was developed, and it was demonstrated that the TH measurements of forearm temperature distribution during SPT, supported by a mathematical model, offer a new quantification method of allergen-induced skin reactions. The aim of this study is a comprehensive comparison of the TH method with SPT and sIgE techniques. The studies were performed for a group of 51 patients. The SPT and sIgE examinations were done in a routine way. For TH analyses, set of thermograms of both forearms were acquired after prick and analyzed with the use of developed software. All results were converted into categorized scale for comparison. The collected results indicate high correlation coefficients between methods equal to 0.76–0.99. Sensitivity and accuracy of TH assessment in respect of both SPT and sIgE methods is at good level (0.72–0.93). Acceptable level of specificity 0.60–0.88 was also achieved for most allergic responses. Excellent agreement between SPT and sIgE methods was observed which makes the TH assessment competitive. Due to higher precision and sensitivity of digital infrared technology, possibility of making error in diagnosis is significantly reduced. Additional advantage of the TH method relies on an estimation of the skin reactivity which allows highlighting the hypersensitivity patients and automatic correction of the diagnosis.
Highlights
It is obvious that for patients suffering from allergic symptoms a correct and comprehensive identification of allergic sensitization is of fundamental importance
Allergen sensitization is being diagnosed by commonly available methods in clinical practice—skin prick tests (SPTs) and specific immunoglobulin E test
A new thermographic (TH) method for the assessment of Skin prick test (SPT) was developed, and it was demonstrated that the TH measurements of forearm temperature distribution during SPT, supported by a mathematical model, offer a new quantification method of allergen-induced skin reactions
Summary
It is obvious that for patients suffering from allergic symptoms a correct and comprehensive identification of allergic sensitization is of fundamental importance. Skin prick test (SPT) is the most widely used diagnostic method in allergy assessment [1]. SPT is minimally invasive, inexpensive, and the results are immediately available. The second commonly used method is a specific immunoglobulin E test (sIgE). Specific IgE test is quantitative, repeatable and accurate in vitro assay for the measurement of allergen-specific IgE in human serum or plasma [2]. Considerable disagreement between SPT and sIgE for diagnosing of allergic sensitization in young children was reported [3, 7, 8]. Many authors correlated results of both methods, and a good agreement was announced [3, 9,10,11]
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