HYPERSENSITIVITY REACTIONS TO DRUGS - CORRELATION BETWEEN CLINICAL PROBABILITY SCORE AND LABORATORY DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURES

The in vitro diagnosis of allergic drug reactions have not made signif icant progress in recent years. Specific stimulation of lymphocytes fr om allergic patients represents an approach to demonstrating sensitiza tion to the implicated drug. So far, skin tests and RAST can only be a pplied to a limited number of situations. The purpose of this study wa s to standardize the clinical criteria in order to establish a clinica l probability score for each drug. Independently, the various laborato ry procedures mentioned were compared with the established clinical pr obability score for each drug. The results showed that, for the few co mmon drugs studied the correlation between the clinical probability sc ore and the results of the in vitro lymphocyte transformation test was significant. A significant correlation between the clinical probabili ty score and the skin tests was only shown for penicillin and its deri vatives.