The Relation of Food-Specific IgE to Recurrent Wheezing Attack

Yang, Yun Jeong; Kim, Jeong Hee; Choi, Yoo Mee; Lim, Dae Hyun; Chung, Sei Woo; Kim, Jeong Gyu; Son, Byong Kwan

Abstract

PURPOSE: There were some reports that IgE-mediated food hypersensitivity is associated with subsequent development of atopic disease in wheezy infants. So we carried out this study to show whether the food specific IgE antibodies are useful to predict recurrent wheezing attack in wheezy infants.
METHODS
A total of 190 children younger than 4-year-old were enrolled in this study. They were divided into 3 groups according to the number of experienced wheezing attacks as 1st, 2nd and more than 3rd attack group. There were 30 age-matched controls who had not wheezing nor family members of allergy. We measured peripheral blood eosinophil count, total serum IgE level, RAST f1(egg white), f2(milk), D1(Dp) and D2(Df) from the all participants.
RESULTS
The proportion of patients having more than 250/mm3 cosinophils in each group increased as increasing wheezing attacks(P<0.05). The geometric mean of total serum IgE levels were 1.58+/-0.71IU/ml, 1.33+/-0.80IU/ml, 1.71+/-0.72IU/ml and 1.65+/-0.57IU/ml in control, 1st, 2nd, and more than 3rd wheezing attack groups respectively, and it did not increased significantly as the number of wheezing attacks increased(P>0.05). There was no significant difference in RAST f1 levels among the four groups. In contrast, the proportion of positive RAST f1 increased significantly as the number of wheezing attacks increased(P<0.05). There were no significant differences in the percentage of positive RAST f2, d1 and d2 among the four groups(P>0.05).
CONCLUSION
Egg white specific IgE antibody appear to be a risk factor for recurrent wheezing in infants and young child.