Background Despite many efforts to standardize drug skin tests only a few position papers appeared. They were based mainly on prick tests and to lesser extent on intradermal testing. Their standardization is a task set by an ENDA group. Our aim was to re-evaluate our drug skin tests (except patch testing) performed during the past 30 years in a retrospective study and to compare it with a newer...

Expect to encounter 6 to 7 cases of basal cell cancer, 1 to 2 cases of squamous cell cancer, and approximately 1 case of melanoma every year. There is good evidence for using the American Cancer Society's ABCDE criteria as a clinical diagnostic test to rule out malignant melanoma). The revised 7-point checklist has high sensitivity and is therefore useful for ruling out a diagnosis of malignant...

There are several commonly used diagnostic tests for allergy, including prick and intradermal skin tests, patch tests, specific IgE blood tests and challenge tests. There are other laboratory tests that might be useful for very specific situations, which is beyond the scope of this article. The aim of this article is to guide the practitioner in the proper use of diagnostic tests for allergy, a...

Oranges are suspected of inducing adverse skin reactions in patients with atopic eczema. We studied 21 adult patients with atopic eczema and a history of adverse reactions to oranges and 10 patients without. A dietary history, skin tests, serum IgE and oral provocation tests with oranges were obtained. Severity of eczema was monitored by SCORAD, and serum tryptase, eosinophil cationic protein a...

BACKGROUND Allergists commonly perform intradermal skin testing (IDST) after negative skin-prick testing (SPT) to comprehensively diagnose environmental allergic sensitization. However, with the availability of modern methods to detect serum-specific immunoglobulin E (ssIgE), it is unclear if ssIgE testing could substitute for IDST. OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy of ssIgE testing and IDS...

BACKGROUND Skin testing, correlated with patient history, is the accepted method of identifying clinically relevant aeroallergen sensitivity. Traditionally, intradermal tests are believed to be more sensitive in identifying aeroallergen sensitivity than the epicutaneous and percutaneous methods. Therefore, many allergy practitioners use the epicutaneous or percutaneous method first and, if the ...

BACKGROUND Petasin (Ze 339) was recently introduced on the market as a potent herbal antiallergic drug for treatment of respiratory allergies such as hay fever. Few clinical studies have been performed so far addressing the clinical effectiveness of Ze 339. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the antiallergic properties of Ze 339 using skin prick tests with different stimuli, such as codeine, histamine, me...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Administration of carbapenems to β-lactam-allergic patients has always been considered potentially harmful because of a 47.4% rate of cross-reactivity to imipenem reported in a single study. Nevertheless, recent studies have shown that the rate of cross-reactivity of imipenem and meropenem with penicillins is lower than 1%. The aim of this study was to evaluate the poss...

Teleost fish skin is a multifunctional natural material with high penetration resistance owing to specialized puncture mechanisms of both the individual scale and the intact scaled integument. In this paper, we explore the possible additional role of the skin in fish undulatory locomotion by examining the structural and mechanical properties of the dermal stratum (s.) compactum layer of striped...

Background: The lack of standardized skin test products to determine a patient’s (hyper-) sensitivity to medications has required physicians to empirically develop their own testing procedures. These approaches include puncture and intradermal skin tests, patch tests and medication challenges. Desensitization protocols are also frequently used when the necessity of a particular medication is ur...