CLINICAL EVALUATION OF LUMIWARD IMMUNOASSAY SYSTEM FOR SPECIFIC IgE MEASUREMENT ON PEDIATRICS

Using 196 serum samples obtained from both children patients who showed allergic symptoms and normal donors, the usefulness of LUMIWARD immunoassay system was investigated for diagnosis of allergic diseases throughout comparison with skin test and CAP RAST.On fundamental test results, excellent performances were obtained on both reproducibility tests and dilution tests. The interference substances had no effect on the measured values in the assay system. The minimum detectable concentrations were 0.04IU/ml on specific IgE antibody and 0.11IU/ml on total IgE. On 858 tests from 145 patients, the correlation of 8 allergens between LUMIWARD and CAP RAST showed high performance, that concordance rate, positive concordance rate and negative one were 91.8, 90.3, 92.8%, and the correlation coefficient was 0.916.On the clinical evaluations, LUMIWARD showed a little sensitivity and more excellent specificity than the skin test. In regard to the appearance frequency of qualitatively positive sera by age group, only egg white- and/or milk-specific IgE in food allergens were detected on the positive zone at age 0. All allergen-specific IgE had peak frequency at age 2 and decreased gradually at age 6. The IgE against cat epithelium and house dust mite increased in order of age, especially mite-specific IgE reached 70% in frequency at age 6. In the retrospective study of 6-aged patients who showed positive to egg white, seven of nine had been positive to egg white at age 0. One of residual 2 samples showed low concentration IgE (0.04-0.35IU/ml) against egg white, though it deemed to be negative. At age 0, one sample was positive and two sample had low concentration on milk-specific IgE. On mite-specific IgE, all of nine samples showed negative but four samples had low concentration of IgE.These observations suggested that LUMIWARD had the clinical usefulness in detecting IgE antibodies in allergic subjects and earlier diagnosis on childfood.