Skin cross-reactivity between Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus and storage mites in atopic children.

In our environment, some children with allergic respiratory pathology do not have as favorable an evolution as expected after three years of immunotherapy with D. pteronyssinus extracts. We believe this is due to the existence of other mites whose antigenic determinants are not present in D. pteronyssinus. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate skin cross-reactivity between Dermatophagoides and storage mites in children with bronchial asthma. Fifty patients were chosen, with a mean age of 7.78 +/- 2.98 years and a range of 3-14 years. There were 38 boys (76%) and 12 girls (24%) with rhinitis and bronchial asthma. All patients had skin tests and prick tests with the following extracts performed on them: house dust (HD), Dermatophagoides farinae (DFA), Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (DPT), Acarus siro (AS), Glycyphagus domesticus (GD), Lepidoglyphus destructor (LD), Tyrophagus putrescentiae (TP), with negative and positive controls. The areas of the papulae were evaluated in crosses, according to the size of the histamine and using computerized papulometry, using the Kurta series one graphic tablet with one resolution of 200 points per inch. The data were processed with the "Image-pro" analysis image program. The following conclusions were obtained from our study: 1) No case of skin sensitization to storage mites was found in any of our 50 patients, without house dust and/or Dermatophagoides mites also being present. 2) The greatest skin response with regard to histamine was found for DFA (52%), DPT (44%), HD (22%), GD (10%), AS (4%) and GF (2%).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)