Study on the clinical significance of pharmacia rast RIA in animal allergy]

To study the usefulness of Pharmacia animal allergen discs, the specific IgE antibodies in the sera of patients with allergy to pet or laboratory animals were measured with the use of those discs. The coincidental ratio between skin test to cat hair and RAST to cat epithelium was 73.3%, however between skin test to dog hair and RAST to dog epithelium or dog dander it was 66.7% or 60.0%, respectively. The rate of RAST positive do dog dander was higher than to dog epithelium, and so it seems to be the optimum allergen for screening. The correlation between RAST value to dog epithelium and dog dander was good, but there was no relationship between cat and dog epithelium, it seems that cross-antigenicity is low. In laboratory animals, the rate of RAST positive was in decreasing order: guinea pig, mouse, rabbit, rat, hamster. The rate of RAST positive to serum proteins of rat and mouse was lower than to epithelium and urine proteins. It seems not to be useful.