Novel method to analyze cell kinetics for the rapid diagnosis and determination of the causative agent in allergy

PLoS One. 2021 Feb 19;16(2):e0246125. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0246125. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Drug-induced allergy (DIA), an unexpectedly triggered side effect of drugs used for therapeutic purposes, is a serious clinical issue that needs to be resolved because it interrupts the treatment of the primary disease. Since conventional allergy testing is insufficient to accurately predict the occurrence of DIA or to determine the drugs causing it, the development of diagnostic and predictive tools for allergic reactions is important. We demonstrated a novel method, termed high-sensitive allergy test (HiSAT), for the rapid diagnosis of allergy (within 1 hr; with true-positive diagnosis rates of 89% and 9% for patients with and without allergy-like symptoms, respectively). HiSAT analyzes the cell kinetics as an index against chemotactic factors in a patient's serum, as different from the diagnosis using conventional methods. Once allergy has occurred, HiSAT can be used to determine the causative medicine using culture supernatants incubated with the subject's lymphocytes and the test allergen. This test is more efficient (60%) than the lymphocyte transformation test (20%). Furthermore, in HiSAT, cell mobility significantly increases in a dose-dependent manner against supernatant incubated with lymphocytes from a subject with pollinosis collected at a time when the subject is without allergic symptoms and the antigen. The result demonstraed that HiSAT might be a promising method to rapidly diagnose DIA or to determine with high accuracy the antigen causing allergy.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Allergens / immunology
  • Allergens / isolation & purification*
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Cell Movement
  • Chemotactic Factors / metabolism*
  • Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
  • Drug Hypersensitivity / diagnosis*
  • Drug Hypersensitivity / immunology
  • Early Diagnosis
  • Flow Cytometry
  • Humans
  • Jurkat Cells
  • Lymphocytes / immunology*
  • Rhinitis, Allergic, Seasonal / immunology*
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Time Factors

Substances

  • Allergens
  • Chemotactic Factors

Grants and funding

This study was supported in part by the fund [grant number 27-8-3] from the Kakihara Science and Technology Research Foundation (https://kakiharazaidan.jimdofree.com/) and by the funds [grant numbers 116005, 146003 and 187003] from the Central Research Institute of Fukuoka University (http://www.suisin.fukuoka-u.ac.jp/home1/sougou/sougou.html) (H.S.). This study was also supported by JSPS KAKENHI (https://www.jsps.go.jp/english/index.html) [grant number 17K15534] (Y.Y.). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.