[Skin tests and chymopapain-specific immunoglobulins E after chemonucleolysis].

Skin tests (prick tests) with chymopapain were performed on 3 groups of patients: 75 patients awaiting chemonucleolysis with chymopapain (group I), 42 of these 75 patients 2-3 weeks after chemonucleolysis (group II), and 60 atopic patients suffering from asthma and/or rhinitis with positive skin tests to at least one of the airborne allergens (group III). A positive skin test was found in one patient of group I (1.33%), one patient of group III (1.7%) and 11 patients of group II (26.2%). Thus, sensitization to chymopapain is not more frequent among atopic patients, and chemonucleolysis has a highly significant (P less than 0.001) sensitizing effect. Chymopapain-specific IgE's were found in one out of 75 patients (1.33%) before, and in 14 out of 45 patients (31%) after chemonucleolysis; the difference was significant (P less than 0.001). Concordance between skin tests and specific IgE's reached the 74% level. Our results are consistent with those of the literature. They show that prick tests with a 10 mg/ml solution of chymopapain constitute, for the time being, a simple, reliable and cheap method for detecting subjects at risk.