Serum specific IgE: A biomarker of response to allergen immunotherapy

Background: allergen immunotherapy (ait) has proven to be effective. however,no biomarkers capable of predicting the clinical response to ait have been detected. the aim of the present study was to determine a cutoff value for serum specific ige that could be associated with effective ait. methods: we evaluated 174 allergic patients (83 males) with ages ranging between 6 and 77 years. all patients were monsensitized and received sublingual immunotherapy (slit) for at least 3 years with a single allergen extract. symptom severity was assessed using the visual analog scale (vas). drug use was also evaluated. a responder was defined as a patient whose vas score fell by at least 30% over baseline. results: the response to slit was considered effective in 145 patients (83.3%). the use of allergen-specific ige levels >9.74 kua/l as a biomarker of effective slit yielded a sensitivity value of 96.4%,specificity of 100%,and an area under the receiver operator characteristic curve of 0.987. conclusions: assessment of serum specific-ige before ait could be a useful biomarker for predicting response to ait. © 2014 esmon publicidad.