STANDARDIZATION OF IN-VIVO AND IN-VITRO DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURES IN FOODALLERGY

For most foods, true standardization is not yet feasible because there is insufficient: information on the relative importance of individual allergens and their variants. Standardization without sufficient info rmation may easily be counterproductive because improvements are less likely to be implemented In the analysis of natural test material, the following principles apply: 1) RAST inhibition is usually inferior to other means of allergen quantitation. 2) Immunoblot is inefficient fo r some ''important'' allergens and over-efficient for some ''unimporta nt'' allergens and may therefore be deceptive. 3) Single-component ass ays are the only satisfactory way to describe complex mixtures. Improv ing the actual food-testing procedure is important, but will not alone result in a reliable diagnostic procedure. Tests for measuring ''effe ct modifiers'' will have to be developed in order to predict in vivo r eactions to foods. (C) Munksgaard 1998.