Evaluation of the Worth of Skin Testing: Mistakes and Fallacies

Allergic asthma in childhood.

“…For instance, it is seldom possible to obtain a convincing history of reaction to house dust, moulds, and other common inhalant allergens or food allergens, and it is here that skin testing may provide a short cut to diagnosis. The reliability of skin tests depends on the allergens used, on the way the extracts are produced, standardized, stored, and applied, on the individual skin reactivity, and on how the tests are interpreted (Aas, 1963(Aas, , 1965(Aas, , 1966Friedewald, 1952;Horesh, 1959;Miller, 1965;Sobel, 1962;Wilken-Jensen, 1959). Even under optimal conditions they will leave room for doubt as to the aetiological diagnosis, unless the case history is absolutely convincing, in which case the skin test may be unnecessary.…”

Studies of Hypersensitivity to Fish

“…The use of undiluted commercial fish ex tracts intended for scratch testing resulted in a large proportion of false skin lest reactions, while extracts diluted to TP contents around 20 mg/100 ml resulted in skin test reactions with excellent correla tion with the existence of clinical fish allergy. This demonstrates the necessity of using optimal concentrations of the allergen extracts, and the need for definition and standardization of allergen extracts when these are to be used in comparative clinical or experimental work (1,2,3,21,24,37).…”