How Can We Influence the Performance of Drug Challenge in Future Treatment

Drug provocation tests are assumed to be the gold standard of drug allergy workup by ensuring the most objective results in clinical observation irrespective of the underlying mechanism of the reaction. Despite its some disadvantages, it is still one of the cornerstones of the drug allergy diagnosis. In this review, new methods for improving diagnostic accuracy of drug provocation tests will be discussed. In this sense, extended challenges are recently shown to have better outcome especially in diagnosing non-immediate reactions due to antibiotics. In children with non-immediate mild cutaneous reactions, provocation tests are becoming to take place of skin tests with promising results. Furthermore, drug provocation tests have been shown to prevent unnecessary desensitization protocols in newly developed drugs such as biological agents. These new data on diagnostic performance of drug provocation test seem to influence the future treatments in patients with drug hypersensitivity reactions. © 2018, Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature.