At this year’s  meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, Phadia US introduced two new allergy tests which  will allow allergists to test for the particular molecular components sparking the allergic reaction in patients and, as a result, identify precisely those patients in danger of severe allergic reaction to allergens such as peanut, wheat, or egg and many others.

The Immuno Solid-phase Allergy Chip, or ISAC uses a small sample of blood to produce results for 103 components representing a wide spectrum of allergens. Using this additional information, the allergist should be able to identify the individual sensitisation patterns for every patient, and thereby develop a personalised allergy management plan.

Phadia also launched ImmunoCAP HR which provides highly refined specific allergen component testing so that doctors can assess a patients' relative risk of an allergic reaction by measuring the number of specific IgE antibodies to various allergens and thus asses how sensitive they are likely to be to that allergen.

Phadia believe that ‘molecular-level diagnostics represents true next-generation technology in the complex field of allergy diagnosis and treatment’ and hope that ISAC and ImmunoCAP HR will make them more widely available to the allergy community.

For a fuller report

More articles on allergy testing

First Published Novemeber 2009

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