The results of the research have not yet been published. Dr Grzegorz Porębski has presented them for the first time to an international group of allergologists and immunologists last weekend in Kraków during the Skin Allergy Meeting (SAM) conference. The conference was organised by the European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology.
“Hypersensitivity to medicine caused by allergy is becoming a problem for more and more patients. They frequently ask allergologists which of the drugs they use is the cause for allergic reaction,” said Dr Grzegorz Porębski. He continued to explain that the symptoms of allergy are most often various kinds of skin lesions (cutaneous drug reaction, dermatitis medicamentosa), particularly maculopapular rash, which may cover a large portion of the patients body. Aside form lowering the patients’ quality of life, it may lead to more severe consequences.
“If the patient ignores an allergic reaction and the drug remains unidentified, each successive dose may cause even more detrimental effects, even the toxic epidermal nercolysis,” explained Dr Porębski. This very rare allergic reaction can lead to death. It causes the epidermis to peel off from over 30% of the body, resulting in what resembles a severe burn. Nearly one thirds of the patients does not survive; therefore, it is crucial to determine which medicine causes the allergic reaction.
One way of determining this is to conduct skin allergy tests, but their scope is somewhat limited. A tilt table test is also an option, but doctors try to refrain from employing it for fear of inducing an even stronger allergic reaction. Another way is to conduct blood tests – unfortunately, they are also not very varied. One of them is the lymphocyte transformation test. The doctor takes a blood sample from the patient, isolates the cells responsible for allergic reaction and stimulates them in a laboratory with a particular medicine. If the patient is allergic to that medicine, the cells will proliferate. Proper measuring of this process is quite expensive.
“We wanted to develop something faster, cheaper and at least as good as the lymphocyte transformation test,” stressed Dr Porębski. He explained that the proliferating cells also produce other chemical compounds which induce allergic reaction. The Polish scientists have discovered that measuring the levels of two of these compounds may be as conclusive as the lymphocyte transformation test. The research was conducted on patients that have been using antiepileptics.
According to Dr Porębski, this new method may be implemented in clinical practice very soon. The researchers are currently preparing a paper on their discovery. They also plan to create a diagnostic tool in the future to assist in combating allergies to other drugs.
