Solution Centers To Allergies

It used to be if people wanted to find out what they were allergic to had to undergo a long series of medical tests and treatments that could take weeks or months. If people were allergic to something unusual or rare it could take years or, more commonly, they never would find out. If the allergies were seasonal, they probably disappeared before the solution center found an answer and they would give up on the center testing and go back to life as before. Much of that procedure today has been speeded up and is more straightforward but if people are being checked for allergies there will probably still be several types of tests performed.

There are three basic ways that a solution center or hospital can use to test people for allergies. The most commonly used is a dermal test. This involves putting a small amount of the allergen on the skin. Allergen, by the way, is the medical term for the substance suspected of causing the allergy. Mostly the allergen is applied to the forearm but it could also be done on the back or upper arm. Then the skin of that area is irritated by pricking it with a needle or scratching the skin to allow the substance to get under the skin. If the person is allergic to it there will usually be an allergic reaction in less than 10 to 15 minutes. Usually the reaction just involves itching, redness and swelling of the skin but testers have to be careful with skin tests because in some cases the reaction may be severe and involve respiratory complications. Mostly the skin tests are the intra-dermal allergy test. This test uses a small needle to inject the allergen just underneath the skin. Skin tests are usually used to make out things in the air that people inhale that might be causing the allergy or allergies to insect or animal bites.

A second type of allergy testing done in the solution centers is called elimination testing. This is most often used to identify the food allergies. In a very controlled environment, various foods are either added or removed from the diet and the reaction is monitored. Often the food is disguised in some fashion to prevent psychological factors from interfering with the experiment. Sometimes if people think they are allergic to something they abnormally influence the result, but this method is very time consuming and can only be used if the reactions are relatively mild.

The third and likely the best method of allergy testing is the blood test. As the name implies, this involves taking a small sample of blood and sending it off for clinical laboratory testing. The lab procedure is complicated but basically, they will expose that blood sample to various allergens. If the person is allergic, that blood will create what are called IgE antibodies to fight off the allergen. Depending on what kind of IgE antibodies is created and how many are created the lab can both identify the allergy and tell the person how severe it is. RAST and UniCAP are the two main specific types of recent blood testing for allergies. UniCAP is almost a fully automated testing process that can check for several 100 allergens and will even assign a number from 1 to 6 to identify the severity of the allergic reaction. The major disadvantage of blood testing is it requires a number of specialized equipments. Usually the clinic or hospital will have to mail the blood sample off and will not get results back for several weeks.

• John Palsson
• 16/11/2008, 12:00 PM
• 0 Comments