A COMPARISON OF ELECTROCHEMILUMINESCENCE AND FLOW-CYTOMETRY FOR THE DETECTION OF NATURAL LATEX-SPECIFIC HUMAN-IMMUNOGLOBULIN-E

In vitro correlates of type 1 hypersensitivity to natural latex (NL) p roteins continue to be limited by both sensitivity and specificity. Me thods which have detection limits in the picogram range, namely, radio allergosorbent assays (RAST) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (E LISA), are inadequate for the identification of NL hypersensitivity: i n certain-at-risk groups, such as health care workers, A How cytometry assay (FCA), previously shown to be comparable to RAST and ELISA in t he identification of NL-sensitized pediatric patients with spina bifid a, was compared with electrochemiluminescence (ECL) in the evaluation of pediatric patients with spina bifida and NL-sensitized adult health care workers, As with RAST and ELISA, ECL is capable of detecting pic ogram amounts of specific analyte, The ECL assay detected NL-specific immunoglobulin E (NL-IgE) in three of six health care workers with str ong histories of NL hypersensitivity, All six patients were negative b y FCA. Further, 2 of 11 spina bifida patients found to be NL-IgE negat ive by FCA were NL-IgE positive by ECL, These findings suggest that in sensitivity the ECL assay is an improvement over the FCA for the iden tification of NL-sensitive individuals.