A commercial histamine release test and autologous serum skin test in the diagnosis of autoimmune urticaria

Comparison of commercial histamine release test and autologous serum skin test in the diagnosis of autoimmune urticaria

“…[5] These results indicate that ASST is not a specific test and HR-Test should be done to diagnose autoimmune urticaria. To our knowledge, comparisons between the ASST and the commercial HR-Test of Reflab have not been published from India.…”

Chronic urticaria and thyroid autoimmunity markers

“…The only in vivo method, an autologous serum skin test (ASST), is a screening test for functional antibodies in CU [4]. The basophil histamine release assay (HRA) is currently the "gold standard" for detecting functional antibodies in the serum of patients with CU [5][6][7]. Improved screening tests have been sought in the last decade; for instance, flow cytometry used to determine the ability of a CU patient's serum to evoke an expression of CD63 and CD203c on donor basophils is showing some promise [8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

Basophil's secrets revealed by flow cytometry

“…In the last few years, identification of basophil‐specific markers and expression of activation‐specific molecules on these cells attracted many groups to work in this area (6). In this issue of Allergy several papers give a state‐of‐the‐art update of flow cytometry‐assisted investigation of human basophils and propose novel applications of this technique in the diagnosis of allergic disorders (7–13).…”

“…Moreover, ASST is not fully standardized and the results are not really quantitative. The observation that sera from patients with autoimmune CIU induced histamine release in vitro from basophils isolated from either normal or atopic donors (26) led to the development of a histamine release test that has been validated by a number of papers including one in this issue (11, 27). Another paper in this issue reports the validity of a tricolor flow cytometry, based on CD63 expression, to detect functional autoantibodies in the serum of patients with CIU and positive ASST (10).…”