The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology
-
J. Allergy Clin. Immunol. · Aug 2018
Mast cell activation test in the diagnosis of allergic disease and anaphylaxis.
Food allergy is an increasing public health issue and the most common cause of life-threatening anaphylactic reactions. Conventional allergy tests assess for the presence of allergen-specific IgE, significantly overestimating the rate of true clinical allergy and resulting in overdiagnosis and adverse effect on health-related quality of life. ⋯ The MAT is a robust tool that can confer superior diagnostic performance compared with existing allergy diagnostics and might be useful to explore differences in effector cell function between basophils and MCs during allergic reactions.