BACKGROUND Subcutaneous Immunotherapy (SCIT) modifies the allergic response and relieves allergic symptoms. SCIT is the only and a very effective treatment for insect venom allergy. We hypothesized that basophil sensitivity, measured through the basophil activation test, would decrease during SCIT up dosing. Expression of CD203c was compared to CD63 as marker for basophil activation, using a Bl...

BACKGROUND Basophil activation test (BAT) reproduces IgE-mediated allergic reactions in vitro and has been used as a diagnostic test. Different markers can be used to identify basophils in whole blood and have implications for the outcome of the test. We aimed to assess changes in the expression of CD123 and HLA-DR following basophil activation and to select the best gating strategy for BAT usi...

BACKGROUND For in vitro diagnosis of wheat allergy, specific IgE to wheat is known to be a poor predictive marker. Oral food challenge, the gold standard for the diagnosis, is accompanied by a risk of severe induced reactions. Reliable in vitro tests are needed to be developed for safe indication for oral challenge. OBJECTIVE We examined the utility of a basophil activation marker, CD203c, fo...

BACKGROUND Flowcytometric identification of basophils is a prerequisite for measuring activation of basophils with IgE-dependent or IgE-independent stimuli. Aim of this study was to compare different marker combinations in a simultaneous multicolor flowcytometric measurement. METHODS Ten patients with a grass pollen allergy and three controls were included in the study. Basophilic cells were ...

BACKGROUND The indirect basophil activation test using flow cytometry is a promising tool for autoimmune urticaria diagnosis. We aimed to identify better donor basophils (from atopic vs. non-atopic donors and interleukin-3 primed vs. unprimed basophils) and improve basophil identification and activation markers (eotaxin CC chemokine receptor-3 [CCR3] vs. CD123 and CD63 vs. CD203c). METHODS Do...

background: asthma is very common in children and its diagnosis is based on clinical manifestations, which can be misdiagnosed as other respiratory diseases with similar signs and symptoms. objective: to analyze the expression of st2l and cd203c in the diagnosis of pediatric asthma. methods: basophils were purified from whole blood samples of patients and healthy controls using ficol-paque grad...

There are currently no diagnostic methods in vitro for aspirin-induced chronic urticaria (AICU) except for the provocation test in vivo. To identify disease markers for AICU, we investigated the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of the promoter loci of high-affinity IgE receptor (FcεRIα) and CD203c expression level in Chinese patients with AICU. We studied two genotypic and allelic frequenci...

BACKGROUND Detection of allergen-induced basophil activation by flow cytometry has been shown to be a useful tool for allergy diagnosis. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess the potential of this technique for the diagnosis of pediatric cow milk allergy. MATERIAL AND METHODS The quantification of total and specific IgE and basophil activation test were performed to evaluate cow mil...

Dear Editor, We are grateful to Dr. Chirumbolo for the letter in response to our paper describing a basophil activation test for chronic urticaria [1, 2]. We agree with most of the issues raised by Dr. Chirumbolo, but some points need to be addressed. The non-atopic donors in our study were adults, not infants. Among 3-5 healthy individuals with blood group O, one with a high basophil count was...

INTRODUCTION 'Gold standard' in the diagnosis of atopic disease are skin prick tests and specific IgE evaluation. Well-established in vitro tests, such as the histamine release test, the leukotriens release test and the flow cytometric basophil activation test can be very helpful in diagnostics, especially when the skin prick test is contraindicated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the us...