House dust mites in Kuwait: preliminary pilot survey to shed some light on diagnosis and treatment of mite allergy

ABSTRACT

The work includes the findings of a pilot survey on house dust mites in five districts of the Kuwaiti environment. This preliminary work suggests that storage mites are the predominent endophilic species, and Tyrophagus putrescentiae lies first in the order of infestation of patients houses. One D. pteronyssinus is only recorded and D. farinae is still absent. The authors discussed their findings with those of other workers at the international level and reached to a conclusion that the observations arrived at in this work are not conclusive and a detailed surveillance study on house dust mite fauna has to be undertaken before resort to any hyposensitization treatment for mite allergy in Kuwait. They shortly reviewed the role of house dust mites as causatives or transmitters of Kawasaki disease [MLNS] and suggested to mobilize researches on this disease to shed light on its position among children of the Arab world