Detection of Allergy to Penicillin and Other Antigens by In-vitro Passive Sensitization and Histamine Release from Human and Monkey Lung

Abstract

ummary: Preparations of chopped human and monkey lung were used to estimate the reaginic activity of serum from allergic patients. The lung preparation was passively sensitized by incubation with serum taken from the patients, and then challenged with the antigen responsible for the allergy. Measurement of the histamine released from the lung gave a quantitative assessment of the level of reaginic activity in the patient's serum.Tests were done on patients allergic to four natural antigens, including grass pollen, and to penicillin. Human lung proved more sensitive and possibly more specific than monkey lung in testing for natural allergies. The results of testing for penicillin allergies were less satisfactory, possibly because of the difficulty of reconstructing the appropriate antigen.

New In-vitro Test for IgE-mediated Hypersensitivity in Man

“…The order of magnitude of releases in these experiments is comparable with releases obtained in other laboratories using the same method with human lung tissue instead of skin (Parish, 1967;Assem and Schild, 1968;Orange, et al, 1971).…”

“…The results are summarized in the Wide et al (1967) and has the additional advantage that postoperative human skin is more widely available than human lung, which has been advocated for similar in-vitro tests by other workers (Assem and Schild, 1968). That the observed histamine release in this model is due to union of antigen with IgE antibody is confirmed by the following evidence reported in detail elsewhere (Greaves et al, 1972).…”

Antagonism by β‐adrenoceptor blocking agents of the antianaphylactic effect of isoprenaline

“…The methods used for measuring histamine release from chopped lung by biological assay on guinea-pig ileum have been previously described (Assem & Schild, 1968). Histamine releases are expressed in terms of the histamine content of the tissue.…”

“…Histamine release from passively sensitized human lung Passive sensitization of chopped human lung was carried out as described by Assem & Schild (1968), using serum from patients severely allergic to the house-dust mite Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus. Antigen extracted from the mite was kindly provided by Dr. K. Maunsell ; an optimal concentration of this antigen for histamine release (50 ug/mg) was used throughout.…”

Reaginic Antibodies on Basophils in Grass Pollen Allergy, as Shown by Rosette-Formation

“…The most commonly used methods involve mea surements of histamine released either from leucocyte suspensions [Pruzansky [Goodfriend and Luhovyj, 1968;Assem and Schild, 1968], and the micro scopical observation of degranulation of allergized basophils [Hastie, 1971] or mast cells [Patterson and Suszko, 1971] after treatment with allergens. The presence of IgE molecules on the cell membrane of hu man basophils was recently demonstrated by Ishizaka et al [1970] us ing radio-labelled anti-r serum.…”