Relationship between serum total IgE, specific IgE, and peripheral blood eosinophil count according to specific allergic diseases

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Elevated IgE, and blood eosinophil count are considered the hallmarks of allergic diseases, while the levels of those parameters are shared with normal population. This study is aimed to investigate the relationship between those factor and clinical value according to specific allergic diseases. METHODS: We reviewed medical records of 946 patients with allergic diseases who had taken the allergy tests from 2001 to 2010. The effects of age, sex, specific diagnoses of diseases, such as atopic dermatitis (AD), allergic rhinitis (AR), bronchial asthma (BA), urticarial on allergy tests were assessed. RESULTS: In contrast to those of total eosinophil counts, there was the trend of increasing IgE value with the age in children with allergic diseases. The titer of total IgE and eosinophil count were higher than those of control group of patients with acute urticaria. There was the positive relation between total IgE and eosinophil count in patients with allergic diseases. The positive predictive value and negative predictive value of total IgE for specific IgE were higher than those of total eoshinophil count. CONCLUSION: There were the positive relation of total IgE and total eosinophil count in allergic diseases and the higher value of those compared with the control in this study. These values over a certain level have a positive predictive value of serum specific IgE and help us to determine whether we should test the serum specific IgE in patients with allergic diseases.