Faster and More Accurate Identification of Drugs Causing Allergic Reactions: a Great Relief for Patients

KRAKOW, Poland, September 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Medication is a major pillar in the management of many diseases. But for some patients, their use can have detrimental effects including cutaneous adverse drug reactions (CADR), a common form of allergic skin disease, that can seriously impact on their quality of life.

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However, the diagnosis of CADR could now improve significantly thanks to a new method developed by a group of researchers led by Dr Grzegorz Porebski, Jagiellonian University, Department of Clinical and Environmental Allergology (Krakow, Poland).

Faster, safer, more accurate and widely available 

The new technique is faster and more accurate than existing methods as it allows the accurate identification of the drug causing the reaction:

"People usually take more than one drug together and it's impossible to withdraw all this medication immediately. Now they have a new tool that can improve the causality diagnosis to exclude the drug which has caused the allergy and it can be used in quite a large group of people affected by these reactions," explains Dr Porebski.

In addition, the method is safer because it doesn't require exposure of the patient to the drug, as it is performed in vitro with a blood sample. Another advantage is that the technique is easy to perform and could be easily available in health centres, as opposed to other methods which are more expensive and therefore not accessible to all patients.

It has been studied in a drug whose use is widespread among Europeans - carbamazepine - which is prescribed in cases of epilepsy, psychiatric disorders or neurophatic pain. However, the study is also to confirm the method's efficiency in the use of antibiotics and new phases will be extended to other drugs.

The implications of this new method will be presented at the Third Skin Allergy Meeting (SAM) organised by the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) in Krakow (Poland), from today until Saturday. Europe's leading researchers and clinicians in the field of skin allergy are gathering at SAM to share their expertise with participants on a wide range of topics. 

More information about SAM 2014: http://www.eaaci-sam.org

To download press material: https://hkstrategies.egnyte.com/fl/o17kH7dUCl/EAACI_SAM

REFERENCE

1. Porebski, Grzegorz; Bosak, Magdalena. Cytotoxic Diagnostic Assays Are Effective In Drug-induced Maculopapular Exanthema. Presented at SAM 2014, Krakow, Poland.

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