Analysis of total immunoglobulin E and specific immunoglobulin E of 3,721 patients with allergic disease

Abstract

Due to the increase in the prevalence and incidence of allergic diseases, improving the sensitivity and specificity of screening indexes is critical. Total immunoglobulin E (IgE) is a traditional index for judging allergic diseases, while its specificity is relatively poor. Serum-specific IgE (sIgE) is an objective index with high specificity in the diagnosis of allergic diseases. In the present research, the total IgE and sIgE of 3,721 patients with allergic diseases were analyzed to further illuminate the association between them. The data were derived from 3,721 patients. The serum-sIgE to 14 types of common allergens and total IgE were detected. A total of 2,419 cases (65.0%) of 3,721 patients exhibited increasing total IgE and 1,215 patients (32.7%) exhibited positive sIgE. The consistency rate of the two indexes was 60.4%, and the κ-value was 0.28. In 135 patients with normal total IgE, 82.2% exhibited one sIgE positive and 17.8% exhibited two or more sIgE positive. While the number of positive sIgE increased and the detecting level enhanced, the number of positive total IgE markedly increased. Patients (84.1%) with increasing total IgE were associated with positive sIgE, but the increase of total IgE could not be completely explained by the total accumulation of sIgE. Total IgE may play an important role on screening allergic disease while sIgE could be used as crucial evidence for allergy diagnosis. Although the consistency of the two methods was poor, neither total IgE nor sIgE could replace each other. Combining the two indexes with clinical manifestations together will improve the method.