SEROLOGICAL DIAGNOSTIC OF NATURAL LATEX ALLERGY AND MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION OF A NATURAL LATEX EXTRACT

Latex is recognized as an allergen of increasing importance. II is essential to establish well characterized reference preparations in order to ensure the quality and consistency of subsequence extracts, but this is complicated by the lack of an international standard. In our investigations we have tested different latex raw materials. In highly sensitive patients skin tests with a latex extract can cause systemic reactions and therefore in vitro tests like EAST or RAST for the determination of latex specific IgE in patients sera may be an attractive option. However the results will be influenced by the quality of the allergen disks used. In the absence of in vivo data, such as skin prick test results, it was only possible to compare the allergen disks produced with different latex extracts in terms of the RAST classes measured in serum from suspected latex allergic patients. Our investigations showed that a natural latex extract is the most suitable for the preparation of allergen disks as judged by the highest RAST classes. These extracts were characterized on a molecular basis by IEF, SDS-PAGE and blotting techniques. The relative frequencies with which different allergens were recognized was deduced by constructing an allergo-gram which enabled us to identify 2 major, 1 intermediate and 1 minor allergen.