Biomedical Research

Purpose: To analyze the relationship between the specific IgG antibodies of 14 food allergens and allergic skin diseases.

Method: 340 patients of allergic skin diseases treated in our hospital during March 2012-June 2014 are selected, including 164 males and 176 females. In addition, 30 cases of healthy people without anaphylactic reaction medical history based on the physical examination center of our hospital are selected as the control group. The food intolerance test kits (American BIOMERICA Corporation) are adopted, and the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) semi-quantitative detection method is applied to detect the concentrations of the antigenic IgG antibodies in 14 commonly seen foods including beef, milk, chicken and pork.

Results: The specific IgG antibodies of the 14 food allergens have different concentrations in serums of the patients; in which cod, crab, egg, milk, shrimp and soybean have relatively high contents of 15.43%, 41.76%, 52.04%, 32.43%, 21.45% and 8.92%, respectively. The specific IgG antibody positive rates of the three types of skin disease patients are significantly higher than that of the control group, in which the positive rate of the urticaria group is 77.73%, with significant difference with that of the control group (X2=173.24, P<0.05). The positive rate of the eczema group is 89.35%, which is also significantly higher than that of the control group (X2=481.52, P<0.05). The positive rate of the specific antibody of the atopic dermatitis group is 81.19%, which is also significantly higher than that of the control group (X2=274.38, P<0.05). With the growth in ages, the positive rates of the specific IgG antibodies in serums of three groups show down trends of varied extents. The chi-square test is conducted on the antibody positive rates of the patients with ages under 3 y old and that during 25-50 y old, with the result that the patients of eczema have significant difference (X2=164.23, P<0.05).

Conclusion: The serums of the allergic skin disease patients have food specific IgG antibodies, illustrating the correlation between allergic skin diseases and food intolerance. The detection on food specific IgG antibodies plays an important role in diagnosis on allergic skin diseases and prevention of food allergy.

Author(s): Jia Qi, Wei-Wei Wang, Yu-Jie Zhang, Jian Wu, Jun Wei, Li-Qing Hu, An-Quan Shang
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