Background:
Skin testing is a mainstay in allergology, and its importance is increasing in several fields. The
ability to choose the most suitable technique according to the clinical setting is an advantage for the medical team.
Objectives:
To describe in detail an alternative technique of the coetaneous allergy test (skin scrape test) conceived as a
variation of the former skin scratch test; to evaluate its value as a tool for diagnosis of immune sensitization; and to compare
its accuracy with the skin prick test.
Methods:
The skin scrape test and skin prick test were performed side by side with the same allergen extracts in 162 human
subjects classified in two groups according to the known presence or absence of serum specific-IgE to these allergens.
Results:
The sensitivity of the skin scrape test to detect immediate reactions was 85.0%. The sensitivity of the skin prick
test was 86.5%. The sensitivity of both techniques analyzed together as a unique procedure was 94.2%. The specificity of
the skin scrape test was 90.1%.The specificity of the skin prick test was 72.9%.The specificity of both tests analyzed together
as a unique procedure was 70.5%.
Conclusions:
The skin scrape test is an alternative and complementary technique for allergic skin testing, and it is able to
detect IgE-specific immune sensitization without the disadvantages of the skin scratch test. The skin scrape test has similar
outcomes to the skin prick test.
A 14-year-long data set containing daily values of meteorological variables was used to train three artificial neural networks (ANNs) for daily, weekly averaged and monthly averaged global solar radiation prediction for Fortaleza, in the Brazilian Northeast region. Local climate is semiarid coastal. Day of the year, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, irradiance, precipitation, cloudiness, extraterrestrial radiation, relative humidity, evaporation and wind speed were adopted as predictors. The ANNs were developed by an in-house code and trained with the Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) algorithm. Besides the lack of explicit predictors able to model El Niño and La Niña phenomena, which have strong influence on local weather, the accuracy of the predictions was considered excellent according to its values of normalized root-mean-square error (nRMSE) and good relative to mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) values. Both error metrics presented the smallest values for the monthly case study.
Two groups of isoforms of rhEPO, at a concentration of 300 µg/ml, were tested as putative inhibitors of the lectinic hemagglutination reaction in order to obtain affinity ligand(s) for hormone purification: groups I (pI: 3.80; 3.89; 3.95; 4.07, 4.15 and 4.26) and groups II (pI: 4.15, 4.26; 4.38; 4.51; 4.72 and 4.93) Crude extracts from the vegetable materials Abrus precatorious (Abrin), Artocarpus incisa (Frutalin), Artocarpus integrifolia (Jacalin), Canavalia ensiformes (ConA), Canavalia brasiliensis (Conbr), Cratylia floribunda, Dioclea altissima (DAL), Dioclea grandiflora (DGL), Erythrina vellutina (EVL), Erythrina cristagalli, Lutaelburgia auriculata (lectin not fully characterized yet), Lycopersicum esculentum (LEA), Phaseolus vulgaris (PHA), Ricinus communis (Ricin) and Triticum vulgaris (WGA) were used. Only some of the galactose-specific lectins and the GlcNAc-specific lectins showed rapid full inhibition of the hemagglutination reaction for the less acidic isoforms and the total isoforms of rhEPO, respectively. On this basis, the selected lectins were purified by affinity chromatoghraphy and covalently coupled to cyanogen bromide activated Sepharose® (Amersham-Pharmacia). CHO.K1 cell culture supernatant containing rhEPO was loaded onto the lectin resins and the recoveries were calculated by using specific elutions
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