In Vitro Tests for Immediate Hypersensitivity to Penicillins

As with other drugs, but perhaps more so, a variety of humoral and cellular investigations have been utilized over many years with the aim of aiding the diagnosis and elucidating underlying mechanisms of penicillin hypersensitivities. The most commonly and widely used in vitro 

While it is clear that the prime choice of tests for the diagnosis of penicillin-induced immediate reactions is the skin test, co-anployment of serum IgE tests for penicillin-reactive IgE antibodies is advisable since some cases of positive IgE tests have been seen in patients with a history of an immediate reaction to a penicillin bnt a negative skin test to the drugs. 

In more recent years, a number of laboratories have developed and applied their own in-house 

3 The Basophil Activation Test in the Diagnosis of Penicillin Immediate Hypersensitivity 

This section should be read in conjunction with the discussion of challenge testing set out in Sect 4.4. 

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