title: Epithelial or dandruff allergen for the diagnosis of dog allergy by RAST?
abstract: When used for screening by the RAST technique, dog epithelium provided too few positive results (29.2%) compared with dog dandruff (58.8%), cat epithelium (53.6%) and horse dandruff (52.2%). However, dog dandruff can provide an unexpectedly high incidence of positive RAST results (45.2%) in sera from patients with an allergic history to cat or horse, but not to dog. Dog dandruff allergens were found to cross-react with some cat or horse serum proteins in about 25% of such patients. We conclude that dog dandruff is preferable to epithelium for screening by the RAST technique, but if emotional issues involving a family pet arise then confirmation by a trial separation is likely to be more convincing than a provocation test with a possibly non-specific allergenic extract.
mesh_terms: D000485:Allergens / Q000276:immunology*; D000818:Animals; D002415:Cats; D004285:Dogs; D004848:Epithelium / Q000276:immunology; D006197:Hair / Q000276:immunology*; D006736:Horses; D006801:Humans; D006967:Hypersensitivity / Q000276:immunology*; D005779:Immunodiffusion; D007073:Immunoglobulin E / Q000276:immunology; D011852:Radioallergosorbent Test
chemical_list: D000485:Allergens; D007073:Immunoglobulin E