A simplified screening test for the diagnosis of allergy.

The Quidel allergy screen is a relatively rapid (less than 2 hours) multiallergen dipstick method for detecting specific immunoglobin E antibodies in serum. It was developed to answer the need of primary physician nonspecialists in allergy for a convenient in-office screening test for diagnosing allergy. The new test was evaluated against the benchmark diagnostic skin tests and the radioallergosorbent serologic tests for sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and technical feasibility in an office setting. It was found that while the Quidel allergy screen lacks the specificity of the standard tests, its overall sensitivity, as defined by the percentage of patients with positive skin reactions who also tested positive with the Quidel screen (68%), its ease of use, and its rapidity warrant its consideration as a screening tool for confirming a possible case of allergy.     

Allergic Bronchopulmonary Aspergillosis

Allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, a syndrome associated with asthma, manifests with transient pulmonary infiltrates and eosinophilia and can progress to severe proximal bronchiectasis, bronchocentric granulomatosis and pulmonary fibrosis. Early recognition and treatment should favorably influence these complications. Use of the precipitins test with Aspergillus antigens as a screening procedure has identified 99 possible cases in California over a 50-month period. At least 44 cases have been confirmed; and demographic analysis shows that a preponderance of them involved patients less than 35 years old, occurred in farming and rural communities and were discovered in the months of September through February.