Overview
The goal of this clinical trial is to validate a newly developed test in the diagnosis of patients with amoxicillin allergy (i.e. T-cell activation test). The main questions the study aims to assess are the reliability and applicability of this test. Participants will be asked to visit the hospital 1, 3 or 5 times during which blood is collected and when applicable, allergy skin testing is performed.
Description
Drug allergy is a significant health issue with a serious medical and financial burden of mis- and overdiagnosis. Currently applied tests differ for immediate and nonimmediate drug allergy and have variable sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, correct diagnosis remains difficult and frequently requires potentially dangerous and time-consuming challenge tests. Drug-specific T-cells play a central role in initiation and maintenance of both immediate and nonimmediate drug allergy and can be studied in the lymphocyte transformation test (LTT). However, technical difficulties have hindered entrance of the LTT in mainstream use. The investigators' data indicates that flow-based intracellular trapping and staining of markers induced during activation (such as CD154 and cytokines) enables a rapid enumeration of rare drug-specific T-cells in the blood of patients with immediate and nonimmediate amoxicillin allergy. The ambition of this project is to validate a "one fits all" assay that meets the requirements of a safe, patient friendly, accessible, and performant test that could merits the status of a primary investigation in the diagnostic algorithms. Moreover, as the tests is cost effective, it could also become an attractive method for broader applications such as the delabelling of spurious allergies. This project will focus on allergy to amoxicillin.
Eligibility
Inclusion Criteria:
Participants are eligible if they:
- Are ≥ 6 years
- Are capable of informed consent, or if appropriate, participants have an acceptable individual capable of giving consent on the participant's behalf (e.g. parent or guardian of a child under 18 years of age)
- Have a suspected history of amoxicillin allergy
Exclusion Criteria:
- Patients who are lacking capacity or do not have an acceptable individual capable to provide informed consent
- Pregnant women
- Breastfeeding women