All issues > Volume 32(9); 1989

Original Article

J Korean Pediatr Soc. 1989;32(9):1282-1287. Published online September 30, 1989.

Specific Antibody Response in House Dust Mite Asthmatics on Immunotherapy.

Won Sup Shin¹, Bub Sung Kim¹, Sang Il Lee¹

¹Department of Pediatrics, Paik Hospital, Inje University, Seoul, Korea

Received: August 17, 1989;  Accepted: August 17, 1989.

Abstract

The immunotherapy has become a useful and effective method to treat allergic respiratory diseases. It is a logical assumption that immunotherapy produces symptom relief as a result of immunologically specific response. This study was performed to delineate the IgE, IgG and IgG4 responses to immunotherapy, and their relationships. We selected the six asthmatic children on immunotherapy with Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (Dp). A set of samples from each patients were drawn, one before the treatment and another after a year treatment. The specific antibodies (IgE,IgG and IgG4) were measured by RAST (Pharmacia, Sweden), and we take the logarythmic values of each radioactivity (CPM; count per minute). These values were converted to arbitrary unit (AU), the scale was 0~10 AU. Specific IgE antibody response against Dp did not change with the treatment (p=0.83). Dp-specific IgG antibody response (p=0.012) were remarkable with immunotherapy in comparison to the IgG4 response (p=0.071). In conclusion, clinical effect of immunotherapy is due to the generation of IgG antibodies rather than the suppression of IgE response. Among the IgG responses, IgG-subclasses other than IgG4 might be the main responder to the immunotherapy.

Keywords :Immunotherapy, Specific Immunoglobulin; IgE, IgG, IgG4